ActArchitecturePhilosophy & Practice of the Community Design Center

Activist...not content with the way things are...

Edited by: Dan Pitera & Craig L. Wilkins

Affect change in the established way of doing things.

Reflect

ii

Book Editors:

Book Design:

Craig L. Wilkins, Ph.D., AIA, NOMA, ARAInstructor, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture + Urban PlanningFormer Director, Detroit Community Design Center

Dan Pitera, FAIA, ACDProfessor, University of Detroit Mercy School of ArchitectureExecutive Director, Detroit Collaborative Design Center

Dan Pitera, FAIA, ACD

Cover Image: DCDC Workshop Process with The Alley Project, Southwest Detroit

ISBN: 978-0-9904595-3-8© 2015 Detroit Collaborative Design Center, University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture

iii

Thank You...to all those who help expand the nature of all practices to includemore people, more programs and more geographies.

iv

Preface

You are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social and civic

contributions to the cause of civil rights. You are most distinguished by your

thunderous silence and your complete irrelevance….You are employers,

you are key people in the planning of our cities today. You share the

responsibility for the mess we are in, in terms of the white noose around

the central city. It didn’t just happen. We didn’t just suddenly get this

situation. It was carefully planned….It took a great deal of skill and creativity

and imagination to build the kind of situation we have, and it is going to

take skill and imagination and creativity to change it. We are going to have

to have people as committed to doing the right thing, to “inclusiveness,” as

we have in the past to exclusiveness.

Whitney M. Young, Jr., Executive Director of the National Urban League

Keynote address delivered at the1968 AIA national convention.11 See Appendix 1 of this book for the

complete keynote address.

01 : Introduction: More People, More Programs, More Geographies

Underpinnings

02 : The Context of Community Design Practice

03 : The Soul Practitioner…

04 : Health Safety and Welfare for All

Actions

05 : Defining Community Design: A History of Community Design Centers

06 : The Foundations of Community Design Centers

07 : The Activity of Activism: A Field Guide for Establishing a Design Center

08 : [Insert Practitioner Here] Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

09 : Community Outreach as a Pedagogic Tool for Both Students & Professionals

10 : The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

11 : Community Design Writ Large: AIA 150—Blueprint for America

Response: After 150: What Is AIA Up to Now?

12 : The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

13 : An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

Reflections

14 : The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

15 : An Evolving Role for Community Design in Affordable Housing

16 : Engaging the School of Social Life: A Pedagogy Against Oppression

17 : The Architecture of Social Capital

18 : Conclusion: This is not your Father’s Practice

Appendixes

Biographies

Contents

v

01 : Dan Pitera, FAIA

Underpinnings

0Gilad Meron & Mia Scharphie

01 : Craig L. Wilkins

01 : Raphael Sperry

Actions

01 : Sheri Blake

01 : Stephen Vogel, FAIA

01 : Dan Pitera, FAIA

01 : Frank Russell

01 : Charles Bohl

01 : Kathy Dorgan

01 :Anthony Costello, FAIA

01 :Stephen Vogel, FAIA

01 :Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA

01 : Stephen Luoni

Reflections

01 : Jana Cephas

01 : Katie Swenson

01 : Tom Dutton

01 : Tom Fisher

01 : Craig L. Wilkins

As always, I want to thank my parents, Velma and George, for giving me a

confidence that far exceeds my abilities; my friends and professorial

mentors John Archer, William Morrish, and Bruce Kimball for continuing the

deception; my late Uncle Mickey for not; the University of Michigan

Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning under the guidance of

then Dean Douglas Kelbaugh, for his foresight in establishing the Detroit

Community Design Center, and former chair Tom Buresh, whose patience

and support allowed us to grow and serve the people of Detroit for years;

colleague and co-collaborator Eric Deuweke for his thoughtfulness,

connections, and boundless efforts on behalf of both the Center and

Detroit; research associates Kasey Vilet, Josh Anderson, Nate Gray, Turquoise

Archie, Brittany Trapp, and especially Damon K. Dickerson, whose great

enthusiasm for our mission helped produce our initial work. To the students

at the universities of Southern, Minnesota, and Michigan too numerous to

mention, who’ve placed some portion of their education in my hands and

from whom I have received an education as well, I thank you all for your

earnest support. To Lisa Schamess and Kat Tanaka Okopnik for their critical

work in editing and connecting the ideas throughout this volume giving it

the final touches it so desperately required. And finally, to my co-editor

Dan Pitera, I offer much thanks and appreciation for agreeing taking on this

endeavor with me when it was little more than a notion, and for enriching

my understanding of true collaboration and dedication. You’ve helped to

make this project a joyous adventure.

AcknowledgementsCraig Wilkins

vi

I also always like to begin with acknowledging my family. To my mother,

Grayce…who nurtured an insight toward the world that anything is

possible, but at the same time, it is far from fair. To my father, Dan…for

though he died when I was very young, he is present in everything I do. To

my wife, Allegra…who guarantees unconditional support and that the

intensive dialogue on what we do remains continuous and honest at all

times. To my 11-year old daughter, Anneka… for her very presence brings

me back to what is most important. To my sister Merrie Jo…for always

being a constant force and providing unwavering support. To Harry…for his

constant interest in the next thing. To Steve Vogel…for his insight in

envisioning the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, his trust in our

approach and his support in our successes and failures. To my co-editor in

this project, Craig Wilkins…for his unrelenting search for quality and critical

content, and because you asked me to join you in this unpredictable

journey. To Maurice Cox…for his ability to inspire me and his patience and

generosity with the numerous late night/early morning phone debates. To

the current staff of the Detroit Collaborative Design Center, Charles Cross,

Christina Heximer, Ceara O’Leary, Rebecca Willis as well as the past staff…

for their persistence and passion in an office that is more chaotic than not,

and because all of the intentions and thoughts that run through this book

are alive and present because of them. To my colleagues and friends, Will

Wittig and Julie Kim…for their unwavering support and encouragement

when it was always most needed. To Lisa Schamess and Kat Tanaka

Okopnik…for their passion for this work making them more of a content

partner than a content editor. Lastly, to my students from the California

College of Arts and Crafts (CCAC), University of California at Berkeley,

Harvard University, University of Kansas, University of Nebraska, and of

course University of Detroit Mercy…for their limitless passion, desire, and

ability to question and challenge.

vii

AcknowledgementsDan Pitera

Dan Pitera, FAIA

Expanding PracticeMore People, More Programs, More Geographies

Introduction

A01

In 1991, I worked for Mark Horton Architecture in San Francisco. It was a

place where energy, passion, critical dialogue, and great design lived. During

this time, we met a pastor who was organizing an effort to address the

living and medical conditions for children with AIDS in Romania. His specific

plan was to design and build an AIDS hospice for children. Mark and I

contacted him, wondering if he needed architectural assistance. His answer

stressed that architectural services were the only help he was having

trouble securing. He had plenty of attorneys and a significant number of

doctors, but not design assistance. “How does your profession distinguish

itself when it comes to projects like this?” he asked. We did not know the

answer to that broad question, but we ourselves readily became involved.

Over the following year and with many complications, the project was

designed and built. The pastor’s original dilemma caused me to reflect more

deeply on why the profession of architecture, unlike law or medicine, does

not have a visible or clear mechanism to address difficult social conditions.

Expanding the Nature of Practice

“Our profession needs to expand the scope of our work more

comprehensively.” I had this thought while working with Mark on the

hospice project, with very little knowledge at the time about what design

centers were and what they did. They were not a part of my educational

process. This is partly because I came from an academic background where

design excellence was the governing agenda. In that worldview, design

centers were places of technical assistance, not design excellence. Projects

like the pastor’s were heartfelt endeavors, but they did not offer

opportunity for Design—with a capital “D.” Or so I was taught to believe.

The key to this point is: Why are museums, expensive houses, and stadiums

places where great design occurs, while projects like nonprofit offices, affordable

housing, and service centers are not? In short, I still believe that design

9

IntroductionMore People, More Programs, More Geographies

Dan Pitera, FAIA

Why are museums,

expensive houses, and

stadiums places

where great design

occurs, while projects

like nonprofit offices,

affordable housing,

and service centers

are not?

excellence and well-designed thoughtful places are an essential part of

culture and society. I also believe (as I did then) that they are very

important to all people.

Craig Wilkins’ opening essay in this volume pairs Paul Polak’s 2005

observation that most design is focused only on serving the richest 10

percent of the world’s population, and John Gavin Dwyer’s Residential

Architect article that states that architects work for only 2% of the

population. 1.1

Design centers and other socially engaged practices expand this influence.

They operate under the premise that designers should expand their

“clientele,” where they work, and the types of projects they engage in. This

does not mean that design centers exclude people who typically build or

hire an architect, urban designer, landscape architect, and planner. Design

centers include more people, more projects, and more geographies in the

process. They are advocates for people who are typically left out of design

and place-making decisions. Design centers widen the undertaking beyond

some people to include all people.

Activist Architecture?

In Dallas, a group of students alongside community residents are building--

or unbuilding--a single-story, 400-square-foot house that was the home for

two families. They are transforming it into a community center—not one

with a basketball court or swimming pool. It will not have classrooms or

service clinics. It is literally a center of community actions, reactions, and

interactions. They remove the opaque interior paneling and exterior siding

off of the exterior walls. You can now see through the entire house—

through a texture of vertical studs and angular cross members. They insert

a new translucent skin on both the interior and the exteriors sides of the

wall. Lights are turned on. The house glows. Chairs appear to be randomly

placed in the front yard. They are the residue of card playing, conversations,

and people drawn to the light. This activist insertion in the center of the

community was directed by the bcWorkshop [bcW].

The scanning of several thesauruses shows synonyms for activists as

militants, radicals, and extremists. These alternative terms seem to vilify a

very basic activity, conflating the perhaps-militant actions that an activist

1.1 Among other results, Polak’s

assertion and his work led to the

Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian

exhibition “Design for the other 90%,”

as well as the formation of D-Rev, a

Palo Alto-based design incubator that

focuses on revolutionary design for

people in poverty.

10More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

Design centers widen

the undertaking

beyond some people

to include all people.

may have taken with the activist’s intent to find a better way of doing

things. We submit that when someone works as an activist, they try to

effect change in the established way of doing things. They are not content

with the way things are. This is a basic activity important for any discipline

to remain relevant and embrace multiple perspectives, controversial

viewpoints, and creative investigation. This desire for change does not

inherently presuppose that the existing system is wrong or outmoded; it

may merely need to be altered, expanded, or tweaked. The work and

commentary in this book is not entirely content with the perceived,

established way of doing things—of practicing architecture. Though the

authors within may not be militants or extremists, they are activists who

question the social, cultural, and political dimensions of practicing

architecture.

This should not suggest that this book is against the profession, but it does,

quite purposely, place itself in the healthy debate on how to best act as

professionals. Craig Wilkins has expanded on this topic in the first essay in

this book. Some the essays in this volume are quite critical of the status

quo in architectural practice. This criticism is designed to be not

condescending, but provocative; a way to catalyze healthy debate. If there is

an existing system of practice, then there will inherently be people who question

this system in an attempt to alter, expand, or tweak it. For the authors of this

volume, that interrogation is called Activist Architecture: Philosophy and

Practice of the Community Design Center.

When constructing the premise and format of this book, as editors we did

not establish either/or positions—this versus that, or us versus them. While

admittedly critical at times, the authors within this book have searched for

the both/and—this and that, or, in fact, not “them” but “us.”

Our work as editors was guided by three intentions: altering practice,

connecting design to social justice, and amplifying the diminished voice. We

sought to establish these intentions as a point of departure that may be

countered (or supported) along the way.

11More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

If there is an existing

system of practice,

then there will

inherently be people

who question this

system in an attempt

to alter, expand, or

tweak it.

Altering Practice

We do not believe that architects are intentionally or maliciously working

for the few and not the many; but we do think that perhaps in general,

practice has strayed afar from its professional roots.

“They” do not have the money to pay for our services. More people in the

process weaken the final product. There are so many other more important

things “they” need before good design. This kind of thinking restricts us to a

certain way of working because it limits us to a certain way of seeing.

Community design centers attempt to alter these ways of seeing and

working. This has led to the label that design centers are alternative

practices. Wilkins’s essay shows that we disagree with this tag. Community

design centers do not represent alternative work; they alter how we work.

Design centers complete the work of a viable and valuable profession in

the society. As Stephen Vogel shows in his essay, “The Foundations of

Community Design Centers,” the realities of traditional everyday practice

prevent many architects from making community-centered design a priority.

Design centers offer us a model to fulfill this desire to expand our

influence on society.

Even with a history of less than 50 years, and still very much a work in

progress, the community design center model opens the profession to a

broader discussion. Understanding the design center’s limited time span to

affect change, Jana Cephas explores examples drawn from centers of the

longest duration (more than 20 years) from across the country and their

significant impact on society, in her essay, “The Influence of Community

Design Centers on Society.” Tom Dutton delves into the scope of influence

that community design centers have had in the university context, in his

essay entitled, “Engaging the School of Social Life: A Pedagogy Against

Oppression.” Dutton positions the varying issues relevant to CDCs against

the need for academies to expand the definition of architecture and what

architects do beyond traditional practice.

12More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

Community design

centers do not

represent alternative

work; they alter how

we work.

Design and Social Justice

In the prior section I used the phrase: There are so many other more

important things “they” need before good design. We would like to dwell on

this for a moment. I recently had a conversation with a client who directs a

free clinic for drug abuse counseling. She passionately made the point that if

someone paid for their services, she or he would expect certain design

quality in their physical surroundings. She also proceeded to explain that

these surroundings are important in the counseling process. If that same

person did not have enough money to pay for services and had to seek

their free clinic, should they expect less quality service or less quality

space? 1.2

Our client’s point was that design is really an issue of social justice, in this

case defined as the distribution of both advantages and disadvantages

across the full cross section of society. The example of the free clinic could

easily translate to a recreation center, service center, nonprofit office, public

street, square, and so forth….The surroundings of our activities contribute

not only to the activities themselves, but to a person’s physical and

psychological development. This is true whether the surroundings are a

home, school, recreation center, or other architectural, urban, or landscaped

space. Stephen Vogel’s essay addresses this issue in terms of the

architectural profession and discusses the “architect’s dilemma—a condition

wherein the architect professes an honest and earnest desire to work

toward public service” suggesting that they understand the link between

the built environment and a person’s development, but the realities of

practice make acting on that desire almost impossible.

Let’s think about a walk down Dearborn Street in Chicago. We wander

through Federal Plaza in front of the post office at the corner of Adams

and Dearborn. Pausing in this space, we see many people moving in many

directions on foot, bike, skateboard, wheelchair, and shopping cart. People

are standing and talking as others pass by them with just inches in between.

The ground of the plaza accepts all who enter. There are no steps, no

fences, and no bollards. Further down the road, we see another public

space with a barrier along the sidewalk. Where the barrier stops, steps lead

down to the usable space. Other than during lunchtime, where people use

1.2 For the record, we would like to

clarify that for the purposes of this

book, high-quality design does not

equal expensive construction.

Thoughtful, meaningful design includes

creativity with lower budgets.

13More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

Design is really an

issue of social justice.

the steps for eating, the plaza is primarily empty. It is a visual urban

ornament. It looks like public space, but it does not act like public space. It

does not accept the public. One might say that there are building codes

that provide ramps and other amenities to help give access to more

people. This is true. But they are only technical improvements. Visual clues

can be designed to make people feel unwelcome even if the appropriate

code elements are in place. Let’s also be honest here, the people these

places are trying to keep out are those who push shopping carts. There are

no code provisions for shopping carts used in this manner. Like the drug

abuse counseling center, this is an issue of social justice. True public space is

to be enjoyed by the public at large. That includes people who use

skateboards and push shopping carts.1.3 These examples illustrate that the

responsibility of design centers toward the public good extends far beyond

merely expanding our practice to include more programs, although drug

abuse counseling clinics, affordable housing, and service centers are vital

contributions. We are also being called upon to question whom the built

environment is built for, and how to expand our practice to advocate for

more people.

Amplify the Diminished Voice

The conditions in the examples given above could occur anywhere—from

neighborhoods, to buildings, to landscapes. A place may appear to be open

to the public, but subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle design cues can keep

people out. The question then becomes: Who is left out of the decision-

making process? Where is their voice in this process?

Design centers work to answer these questions.

In a socially engaged practice, it is common to hear someone say that they

are giving this person or this marginalized group a voice. Everyone has a

voice. It is our power structure and cultural heritage that allow some voices

to speak louder than others—in some cases much louder than others.

What design centers do is establish processes to “amplify the diminished

voice.” 1.4 With respect to the built environment, design centers work to

1.3 The editors understand the

limitations of privatized public space,

and seek to expand them in some

way. Currently, many of these spaces

look like a public asset, but they have

strict limitations on who can physically

enjoy them.

14More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

1.4 http://www.brothermalcolm.net/

mxwords/whathesaid24.html. This

statement draws tangentially from

Malcolm X’s speech on February 14,

1965 to the First Annual Dignity

Projection and Scholarship Award

Ceremony in Detroit, Michigan.

Toward the end of Malcolm X’s

address, he references the simple act

of being a diner at an assembled

dinner gathering. Sitting at the table

[with an empty plate] is not enough. “I

am not a diner until you let me dine.”

bring this diminished voice into an equitable dialogue with previously more

dominant voices. Community design engages the people who are often

marginalized or underrepresented, and bridges the gaps between people

rather than further separating them. 1.5 By amplifying diminished voices,

other voices are not excluded; they are simply not the only ones heard.

Design centers widen the process to include all people.

If It Works, Than It Is Obsolete

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. This phrase may be code for the status quo is just

fine. Don’t make waves…Don’t upset the apple cart….If the world around a

person seems to be just fine, perhaps the boundaries of that world

(physical, social, cultural, etc.) need to be expanded. Even though something

may appear to be in working order, it could soon be outdated or, if viewed

from a different perspective, may no longer appear to be working at all. For

example, take Detroit, Michigan. It is here where the once-innovative

automobile companies made international success through questioning and

challenging the needs and systems around them. They made wonderful

products. Then they became satisfied with those products. They stopped

questioning and became complacent. Other companies in other locations

began to question the system that Detroit built and found opportunities to

innovate and create. What Detroit saw as working; others saw as needing

fixing. With respect to the built environment, every city and every town,

even those that are celebrated as model environments, harbor places and

neighborhoods characterized by disinvestment and people who are

disenfranchised. Design centers look past the status quo that defines the

built environment and question assumptions that support it. They attempt

to find a sort of amnesia by setting aside what is taken for granted. Design

centers reveal the parts of the system that do not work. They frequently

operate in areas where some people might say, “you do not want to be there

after dark.” Whether this statement is true or not, it is often ill informed. It

is a status quo response. A city that has a celebrated downtown or other

district does not work if people talk about the neighborhoods, parks,

schools, or plazas in this way. Through community design, design centers

facilitate a process of questioning, revealing, and designing. Sheri Blake’s

chapter defines this as the “activist architect who views design as not only

1.5 Underlying the following essays

are varying definitions of community

design. Although they are not directly

described here, they do shape the

narrative of this book. To define

community design in this introduction

is not an attempt to ground or

restrict its meaning. It is meant to

provide a point for the counterpoints

that exist throughout this book.

Community design is an inclusive,

collaborative, participatory design

process that includes varying

stakeholders in decision making to

ultimately affect the built environment

of their community from micro to

macro, from brick to [city] block, from

neighbor to neighborhood.

15More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

about creating innovative aesthetic objects, but also about providing people

with the tools and the knowledge necessary to shape their surrounding

environment.” This quote does not say that activist architects ignore

innovative aesthetic objects. She suggests that this is not enough—the

both/and. Stephen Luoni illustrates the varying ways that design centers

engage and design in the surrounding community. He shows that the

definition of design expands far beyond the tradition of making an aesthetic

object. It includes capacity building, strategic planning, seminars, social

activism, oral histories, and workshops, among other things.

Keep three thoughts in mind as you proceed through this book: Design

centers question the methods we use to design; whom we are designing

for ; and where we design for/with them. They ask these questions because

they are not content with the system at hand, and through their inquiry

they can fabricate better places that include more people, more programs,

and more geographies. This book partially stands as a document of what

design centers are and what they have done, but more importantly, it is

also a provocation of what they can become and ultimately their role in

shaping space for all people. This book is tempting us to question our

methods of working. Try new methods, and then question again.

If it works, then it is obsolete.

16More, People, More Programs, More Geographies

Gilad Meron & Mia Scharphie

The Context of Community Design Practice

Underpinnings

A02

Editors Note: Though this book is focused on community design centers

(CDCs), they represent one approach in the emerging ecology of social impact

practices. The editors felt it important to place CDCs in the context of

community design practice, which has evolved since the early 1960s. The work

of Gilad Meron and Mia Scharphie analyzes the various practice models that

have been developing over the years and is synthesized in this book in the

following diagrams and text.

Today, there exists a diverse field of community design work practiced

through a wide range of disciplines from architecture and planning to social

work and public health, and has become increasingly prevalent in

mainstream design culture. In particular, this has affected the rising

generation of students and young professionals.

“A dedication to social justice propels today’s young design professionals,”

writes Cheryl Webber in an article for Residential Architect.2.1 She goes on

to clarify that although young people have always been attracted to

humanitarian causes, the current trend is fundamentally different. Today’s

young professionals grew up in a time of climate change, economic unrest

and unparalleled global awareness, leading them to see socially conscious

design not as an idealistic or humanitarian goal, but as a third leg of

sustainability; environmental, economic, and social. The past two decades

have also seen the rapid growth and development of social

entrepreneurship, which has heavily influenced designers causing a

noticeable increase in market-based solutions to address social issues. Both

the shift in mindset and the proliferation of social entrepreneurship have

been instrumental in the growth and diversification of community design

practice. However, many of the young professionals who seek to build

careers in this field remain uninformed about the mechanisms and

18

The Context of Community Design Practice

Gilad Meron & Mia Scharphie

2.1 Webber, C. (2013, March 1).

Blazing Trails: A dedication to social

justice propels today’s young

professionals. Residential Architect.

strategies needed to translate their passion for social justice into a

financially sustainable design practice.

This is not a fault of their own, but rather a shortcoming of the field as a

whole. The architecture and design professions have become notorious for

neglecting to teach the business of design. Yet there is no lack of innovative

precedents to study in community-based design, in fact just the opposite is

true. In the past two decades there have been dozens (if not hundreds) of

firms and organizations that have proven that a career in community design

is feasible. Many of these pioneers have been instrumental in helping to

bring the terms “public-interest” and “social-impact” to the forefront of

design culture. Their projects, publications, exhibitions and conferences have

helped bring visibility to this area of work and demonstrated the viability of

community design as a model of practice that reaches far beyond the work

of community design centers of the 1970’s and 80’s.

Despite these developments in the field at large, there remains a dearth of

research and writing on how exactly this work gets done. With a rising

generation eagerly looking towards joining or leading community design

practices, there is a real demand for research, documentation and rigorous

analysis of the strategies, methods, approaches and processes that leaders

in the field are using to build sustainable community-based practices. The

1960’s and 70’s were a phase of exploring uncharted territory. The 1980’s

and 90’s were a phase of refinement and testing new methods and

approaches. The 2000’s and 10’s are a phase of new models, new leaders

and new hybrid forms of practice. In order for community design to

continue to evolve and mature, young professionals who will be leading

firms and organizations in the near future need to deeply understand the

models that exist right now; how any why these new models work, where

these new leader have failed, and what strategies and mechanisms allow for

these new hybrid forms of practice to grow, sustain and thrive.

Through ongoing research and comparative analysis of current practices, it

has become clear that there are certain foundational factors common

amongst all community design practices, which inform many of the

decisions and actions of firms. Three in particular have stood out as core

elements. First, the types of activities and work a practice engages in—the

range of services they can offer as a practice . Second, the organizational

19The Context of Community Design Practice

structure of the practice—the way in which both the practice and its

activities are organized, managed and directed. Third, the sources of funding

for the practice—the various types of income and/or support that make

the practice financially sustainable.

To be sure, there are numerous other contextual factors that play a key

role in any community design practice, such as location, politics, economics,

culture, and demographics, just to name a few. However the mapping tool

on the previous page is not intended to fully describe a practice, but rather

it is intended to serve as a tool for young practitioners to start thinking

about how they might build a practice. Through interviews and ongoing

research we have found that these three factors often play a critical role in

the strategic planning and development of firms and organizations. While

other factors also play a crucial role in the development of a design

practice, numerous firm directors have confirmed that these three factors

heavily influence and inform all other decisions.

The intention of this mapping tool aligns with the intention of this book as

a whole; to be used by anyone who is interested in starting a community-

based design practice, both to understand precedents, and to think through

the structure of new practices. We hope this tool can be used by

practitioners, students, teachers, and critics alike to begin to draw out

patterns about practice and build greater understanding of how community

design is evolving, where the bright spots are and why. Our hope is that

through the ongoing use of this tool we will being to gain a broader picture

of the landscape of community design practice and begin to identify areas

that are most ripe for growth.

We hope this mapping tool will serve as a supplement to the rich content

of this book and help build greater understanding of the community design

field as a whole. By looking at the examples on the following page, readers

can get a glimpse for how different types of practices have been mapped.

We hope to use research and analysis to create greater transparency

around community design practice as a means to provide practitioners

with the information they need to build their own practices and thus grow

the field. The future of community design is bright with potential, but to

reach that future we must understand how to get there.

20The Context of Community Design Practice

21

22The Context of Community Design Practice

Craig L. Wilkins

A Soul Practitioner

Underpinnings

A03

“Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small

places, close to home...they are the world of the individual

person: the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he

attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.” 3.1

Eleanor Roosevelt

As design entrepreneur Dr. Paul Polak first observed in 2005, “the majority

of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and

services exclusively for the richest 10 percent of the world’s customers.

Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90

percent.” 3.2 In architecture, the gap is even worse. Architect and professor

John Gavin Dwyer echoes the statistics verified in other studies and

publications when he claims, “[q]uite simply, the architecture profession has

failed to create a way to deliver design that's accessible to the other 98

percent.” 3.3 There are a myriad of reasons for this, beginning with the fact

that most people don’t know or understand a lot of what architects do—

and what they think they know has very little to do with the lives of

everyday people. 3.4 But what if things were different? What if the vast

majority of the public knew exactly what the profession provides? What if

all people could see the everyday and long-term value of architectural

services? What if architects worked to provide those services to the many

people who are traditionally positioned outside their target clientele? It is

about community design, yes; but also about something more. In essence, it asks

important questions about just whom architecture is intended to serve.

24

A Soul Practitioner...Craig L. Wilkins

3.1 Remarks to the United Nations

on the 10tth Anniversary of the

Universal Declaration of Human

Rights, March 27, 1958.

3.2 Paul Polak, M.D., “¡Viva la

Revolución!” October 6, 2011, accessed

December 15, 2014, http://

www.paulpolak.com/viva-la-revolucion/.

3.3 John Gavin Dwyer, “Delivering the

goods: Architects must find a way to

bring better design to more people,”

Residential Architect, June 2007.

3.4 In his article, “Delivering the

Goods,” Dwyer states, “According to

RSMeans cost data, the average

residential architect charges about 10

percent of the construction cost for

design. Standard practices place the

bulk of this payment before bidding. If

bids come back over budget, the typical

contract deflects any responsibility from

the architect and gives the owner three

options: Get more money, redesign

(and pay more in design fees), or

abandon the project….So, if I hire an

architect to design my $300,000 house,

I would have to shell out an additional

$30,000 up front without any guarantee

that what's designed will meet my

budget. If it doesn't, I either need to beg

for more money or throw my $30K in a

recycling bin. How many people can

afford to take that kind of risk?”

Defining Profession

Before I begin, I’d like to first make clear what I mean when I use the term

profession, and by extension, professionals. The word is often employed

with the assumption of general understanding, but commonly

misunderstood and misused in most contexts. This is unfortunate, because

as socially authorized and legally protected groups, professions have

developed into one of the most important forces we have for ensuring a

just and egalitarian society.

A profession requires specialized training and legal or formal certification. It

also implies a sense of vocation and special purpose. Professionals wield a

vast amount of influence and power over how our social world is ordered, by

virtue of their monopoly over critical areas of knowledge. Through the daily

exercise of their protected and exclusive expertise, the world’s doctors,

lawyers, architects, and engineers preserve public health, define and uphold

justice, and design and build safe buildings, bridges and highways, while

routinely making life-and-death decisions that affect people now and for

decades to come. This is a significant amount of power over our lives to be

allotted to a small, self-selected group of people to administer exclusively,

and it does the public a disservice when the misuse of the term distracts

from and diminishes the recognition of this most critical point.

Still, the proliferation of professions as we know them is a rather recent

phenomenon. In the still-blossoming scholarship in this area, a dominant,

definitive, generally accepted theory about the origin of these new

professions has yet to be established. In fact, theories abound not only

about how they’ve come into being, but also whether their continued

existence is really necessary in a modern, information-rich society. Perhaps

the most widely accepted understanding of professions asserts that certain

minimal conditions must be met for a system of collective living to move

beyond self-interested chaos into a generally ordered community: a

method of gathering/creating sustenance and shelter, a method of

knowledge and skill sharing, agreed-upon rules on how to live together, and

methods for keeping well. In an ordered community—we’ll call it a society

—those willing to take on the responsibility of providing those elements

critical to its establishment and well being are thus rewarded for doing so.

Society provides them with a certain amount of standing and prestige for

25A Soul Practitioner...

This book is about

community design,

yes; but also about

something more. In

essence, it asks

important questions

about just whom

architecture is

intended to serve.

Professionals wield a

vast amount of

influence and power

over how our social

world is ordered.

their efforts. In turn, those granted this status must promise to use their

skills in the best interests of society as a whole. This is essentially the

rationale behind professions.

Reasonable? Of course. Yet this is but one theory. Others range from the

cynical—that professions are nothing more than an organized cabal of self-

interested individuals who artificially drive up the value of their services by

claiming production of a higher-quality product than otherwise possible3.5—

to the naïve—that professions are a justifiable recognition by society of

rare abilities, intellect, and moral standards found in only a small, select type/

class of person.3.6 Of course there are others still, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll

conclude here.

Now…there’s probably more than a bit of truth in each of the above

statements, but to begin to make sense of the varied paths each suggests, it

might be useful to look at the word itself for some direction:

The oldest English usage [of profession] was “avowal or

expression of purpose”. It implied religious and moral motives

to dedicate oneself to a good end. Even at this early stage,

societal distrust of these claims was indicated by attaching

connotations of deceit.3.7 [Emphasis mine]

The definition above suggests that the acknowledgment of a profession

was originally predicated on society’s belief that there is something more to

a profession than the desire for wealth or entitlement; that “the very

existence of the professions results from some fundamental need that

society has.”,3.8, 3.9 Hence, a profession might be more fully defined as an

organized, structured, socially acknowledged practice:

founded on specialized educational training, the purpose of

which is to supply disinterested counsel and service to others,

for a direct and definite compensation, wholly apart from

expectation of other business gain.3.10

Barry Wasserman further clarifies the ethical/moral duty implied by the

term “disinterested,” which in the quote above refers to a suppression of

26

3.5 Sarah Wigglesworth, in “The Crisis of

Professionalization: British Architecture 1993,” states, “The development in the early nineteenth century of a professional body representing the interests of architects was motivated by a desire to secure standards of practice in return for status within society. Broadly speaking, the profession guaranteed society that it was the master of an area of esoteric knowledge. In return, society rewarded the professional with a respectable salary and social standing.” Practices. Issue 2. (Spring 1993), 14.

3.6 Robert Descimon. “The ‘Bourgeoisie

Seconde’: Social Differentiation in the Parisian Municipal Oligarchy in the Sixteenth Century, 1500–1610” French History. v.17. n.4. (2003). p.388-424; Terence C. Halliday and Charles L. Cappell. “Indicators of Democracy in Professional Associations: Elite Recruitment, Turnover, and Decision Making in a Metropolitan Bar Association” American Bar Foundation Research Journal, v.4. n.4 (Autumn, 1979), 697-767.

3.7 C.S. Bellis. “Professions In Society” British

Actuarial Journal. v.6, n.2, (2000), 320.

3.8 Malham M. Wakin, Brig Gen (Ret.).

Integrity First: Reflections of a Military Philosopher. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2000), 116.

3.9 The need that we have for health

care, for example, is unlikely to go away and it is that need that over time has generated what we know today as the medical profession. It may come as a surprise to some to learn that the health care professions do not exist for the sole purpose of providing employment to health care professionals or profits for health care organizations. It is because of societal need that our communities develop and maintain medical schools and nursing schools. Similarly, every organized society will express its interest in justice by providing some variation of a court system and a legal profession. We need an ordered society; we want to be treated fairly; we seek justice. We train our judges and our lawyers in law schools supported by the community because of the important value that we place on justice.

3.10 C.S. Bellis. “Professions In Society”

British Actuarial Journal. v.6, n.2, (2000), 319.

A Soul Practitioner...

personal interest to a higher purpose—the “good end” previously

mentioned. He argues that professions are different from trades and other

commercial pursuits because at their very base, they encompass the

following:

• Specialized expertise exercised with judgment in unique situations;

• Autonomy of the professional group;

• Guarantee of a basic level of competence from its members;

• Commitment to public service and trust—a public duty.3.11

27

3.11 Barry Wasserman, et. al. Ethics and

the Practice of Architecture. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 2000), 70 Wasserman, et. al. go into specific criterion of professions:Fundamental criteria for determining contemporary professions that are broadly shared by scholars of professions include:University-level education in a special are of knowledge that is central to the profession being discussed;Internship and supervised entry-level performance in order to master application of that knowledge in practice;Knowledge and practices that require the unique exercise of learned judgment for each new situation(rather than technical knowledge);Establishment of disciplinary identity and uniqueness of the professional group thorough the establishment of professional organizations, journals, systems of education, and standards for licensing;Autonomy, earned by the profession and recognized and granted by society through state licensing, in defining and mastering the knowledge and practice of the profession, resulting in self-policing with regard to the standards and practices and ethical conduct; Having the knowledge and expertise necessary for the well-being of persons in society.

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Fewer Number of People with More Money

-#+$

More Numbers of People with

Less Money

+#-$

with

Deployment of expert, disinterested judg-ment in service to the public’s best interest

Profession

Public

Deployment of expert, disinterested judg-ment in service to the public’s best interest

Profession

+#-$

Fewer Number of People

with

More Money-#+$

More Numbers of People

with

Less Moneywith

Public

Fewer Number of People with More Money

-#+$

More Numbers of People with

Less Money

+#-$

with

Deployment of expert, disinterested judg-ment in service to the public’s best interest

Profession

Public

Deployment of expert, disinterested judg-ment in service to the public’s best interest

Profession

+#-$

Fewer Number of People

with

More Money-#+$

More Numbers of People

with

Less Moneywith

Public

Figure 3.1

Role professions are designed to fill in society:

Maintain a balance in all public v. private access

and application of professional services as it relates

to the built environment.

Figure 3.2

The lack of an expressed ethical position specific

to the practice of architecture results in decisions

being made and justified based on legal or

economic concerns. Such choices inevitably lead

to an imbalance in the access and application of

professional services.

This is a significant collection of requirements, to be sure. What would

induce a group to take on such hefty public responsibilities? Several

possibilities come to mind, the most immediate being the allure of almost

complete autonomy: As long as there is no violation of individual rights,

professions have almost absolute power in determining who they are and

what they do. They can control who becomes a member and by what

criteria, determine how long before one can request admittance and under

what set of circumstances such requests shall be accepted; set the

parameters for specialization; determine what skills are required and where

those skills will—and will not—be applied. In short, professions are granted

the social authority to determine the educational, behavioral, certification, and

practice standards for their members, as long as such standards are positioned

to be for the public good. They are given, in effect, an absolute monopoly

over as broad a knowledge base and skill set as they can master, in return

for the public “being able to entrust a group of people with shouldering

some of its more difficult ethical dilemmas.”3.12 It is this reciprocity

requirement—and the implicit guarantee that all of its members are

capable of fulfilling this requirement—that sets professions apart from

other occupational pursuits. Yes, its members are paid for a service but

what makes that service unique and proprietary—in other words,

professional—is their ability and obligation to apply disinterested judgment

in the delivery of that service. As such, “no member of the professions can

escape these ties to the community since they constitute the very reason

for the existence of the professions.”3.13

Rebuttal

“But what about ball players, accountants, bus drivers, and other skilled

workers? They too have important jobs and get paid for their skills. Are

they not also professionals?” One may reasonably ask. For those who

would argue that the previously established definition does not provide

space for a whole host of other skilled occupations too numerous to list

here, I say, you are correct. The above definition indeed does not include

the litany of occupations that we now call professions. And that’s the point.

Because they aren’t—at least, not in the way the term and its reason for

being are intended.

3.12 Tom Spector. The Ethical

Architect: the dilemma of contemporary

practice. (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2001), 8-9.

28

3.13 Malham M. Wakin, Brig Gen

(Ret.). Integrity First: Reflections of a

Military Philosopher.

A Soul Practitioner...

First, one is not a professional simply because of payment for services

rendered. The payment is the recompense, not the reason. It is the centrality

of vocational judgment in the interest of the public good that sets

professions—and subsequently, professionals—apart. Similarly, having a

career does not in itself accord the status or demands of a professional

career. Although many skilled occupations, including that of bus driver,

professional cook, and plumber, benefit from specialized training and

excellence of judgment, the use of such specialization in the broadest

possible public interest is not a central feature of these applied occupations.

“Well,” you say, “what about professional athletes?” True, they possess a high

level of specialized knowledge and skill that has taken them some time to

study and apply with confidence. One might put forth a strong argument

that sports provide a particular kind of service to us as a society—

especially, let’s say, during the Olympics for example—and thus render a

public duty. However, “professional” sports do not guarantee that each

member of their “profession” will be competent enough to provide you

with the kinds of public service that you may require. If, in fact that were

true, then what sport itself provides us—the test of athletic skills on the

field, the unknown outcome—would be undermined. If we knew the

outcome, if such were guaranteed, then what would be the purpose of the

test? What public value would it hold for us? The very value of sports is the

fact that we don’t expect the same level of performance. We expect

someone to fail—we just hope it’s the other player. In addition, should one

show the talent—or even potential for talent—one can demand an

opportunity to prove his or her worth sans formal educational means

(minor league, college, developmental leagues, and the like). Even should all

of the above be discounted, there is still the matter of disinterested

judgment. What, exactly, is the disinterested judgment for the public good

exercised in professional sports—which arguably houses the largest group

of self-interested members on the planet? Not to cheat so that the general

public can know the game is fair? Um…steroids, anyone? So, yes, you may

even have the kind of skill needed to become an athlete—and very few do

—this still does not, in the true sense of the term and in the manner in

29A Soul Practitioner...

which I am employing it here—accord the designation of professional

status.

I trust you are getting the picture here: remuneration, possession of a

singular skill, or dedication to a trade do not a profession make. Professional

status requires more. Being a professional is a serious responsibility, wherein

one must continually ask, “To whom am I ultimately responsible: the public,

the profession, my employer/employee, my client or myself?” A professional

is expected to come up with the correct answer every time, and the stakes are

often high. It is not an easy condition to live with, but “[l]iving with a certain

amount of internal conflict is the price professionals pay in exchange for

special status, regulated entry into the field, and some degree of business

monopoly.”3.14

Thus, for our purposes a professional can be defined as a formally

educated expert in a particular body of knowledge and/or possessing a

specific set of skills of a socially essential nature, trained to apply these skills

with disinterested judgment for the public benefit. The application of these

abilities is exclusively a professional’s to exercise. The competence of the

professional is certified by a body of similarly educated and skilled

members, and can be measured against an objectively established set of

standards by which each agrees to abide.

Architecture and Its Professions

As I wrote in my last book, The Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture and Music, practice without theory has no purpose.3.15 Meant it,

too. Still do. Some theorizing—introspection, contemplation, whatever you

wish to call it—is essential for members of any profession. In fact, it is

precisely that introspective reflection on the nature of their work that

separates the professions from other occupations. To be a member of a

profession is to understand the full panoply of its efforts over the course of time,

in order to best consider how to viably continue forward as a society.

For the public, the belief that what the profession offers is a

time-honored, ever-increasing and of course, essential service

is key to its willingness to allow [it] to continue; for the

professional, the belief that what they do is not only all of the

30

3.14 Spector. The Ethical Architect, 8.

3.15 Craig L. Wilkins. The Aesthetics of

Equity: Notes on race, space,

architecture and music. (Minneapolis:

UMN Press, 2007), vii.

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A professional is

expected to come up

with the correct

answer every time,

and the stakes are

often high.

To be a member of a profession is to understand the full panoply of its efforts over the course of time, in order to best consider how to viably continue forward as a society.

above, but also both specific and special is critical to attracting

future practitioners to perpetuate the profession.3.16

Professionals spend much of their education developing critical thinking

skills of the highest order because for “decades we have argued that

theoretical investments in the humanities repay the profession in the form

of moral leadership.”3.17 This is the primary, if not the only, reason that

professional education is firmly entrenched in the university system and

situated in the liberal arts—both to ensure that the individual can engage in

a broad external view of what architects do, and to encourage a deeper,

internal view of one’s own practice. I mean, let’s face it, classes in

archaeology, literature, linguistics, philosophy, musicology, astronomy,

physiology and the like rarely help you complete a project on time and

under budget. They do, however, help you evaluate the benefits and risks to

the general public if you undertake the project. To encourage and prepare

one for ethical thinking is the underlying purpose of university education

for the professional.

Unofficially, architecture has historically claimed justification to the title of

profession through the assertion that architecture is both art and science;

however, officially the profession claims rights to the title due to its avowed

mission to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the general public. At

the same time, recalling the words of Polak and Dwyer at the beginning of

this essay, 2 to 10 percent of the population do not a society make. For any

of the above claims to be valid—for the profession to be a legitimate

profession—the benefits must extend to the public as a whole. Thus below,

I argue the efforts of design centers and other socially engaged practices

satisfy both the profession’s unofficial and official raison d'etre. In the

process, these practices can also address a heretofore unattended 90 to 98

percent.

The Artistic Argument

The “Architecture is art, and the architect is thus an artist” thesis proceeds

something like this: Similar to art, architecture’s contribution to the world is

creating buildings that elevate us from our daily lives and give us something

more profound to consider. As art, architecture’s value lies beyond the

31A Soul Practitioner...

3.16 Wilkins, The Aesthetics of Equity,

66-67.

3.17 Daniel S. Friedman. “Architecture

Education on the Verge” AIA Journal of

Architecture. (July 2006). Vol 4. Issue 2, 8.

mere technical aspects of why and how it stands, what shelter it provides,

what function it facilitates. From a certain perspective, a truer statement is

difficult to find. Regardless of your level of acclimation to the practice, there

are undoubtedly structures in this world that simply take your breath away,

if not make you openly weep from joy and excitement upon a lucky

meeting. True, those buildings might be different for different people, but

the fact remains that, like art, architecture has the ability to move us, both

individually and collectively. No one asks how the statue of David stands.

They simply marvel at its stance. Thus, the claim follows, the real value of

art—and consequently, architecture—is in our heads and hearts. Still, the

tears one might shed upon that chance encounter with works of art or

architecture are not the only method of identifying works of value.

If the real value of art and architecture is in our heads and hearts, design

centers ask, “What is the full range of ways architecture can raise the

heart?” For example, a home where one can feel safe, comfortable, and

able to invite friends and family; where one has neighbors who create social

capital and camaraderie; where one finds a haven from the soul-draining

acts of the world, might raise the heart for some people as much as the

Milwaukee Art Museum does for others. Do not such buildings also

provide important, consciousness-raising, life-affirming moments in our daily

lives? The creation of a process whereby communities can effectively

engage each other and create aesthetically pleasing structures and

neighborhoods—as in Favela-Barrio in Rio, HOMEmade in Bangladesh, and

Mitchells Plain in Cape Town—is as important to the critical thinking about

life as the design of Chandigarh, Pisac, or Seaside. Should that not also rise

to the level of art?

I am not arguing against the kinds of architectural objects that are clearly

singular moments in the architectural narrative. Gaudí, Barragán, Siza, Piano,

Botta, Williams—the list goes on—have produced architecture we’ve rightly

hailed as exemplary. That is not the only architecture that can lay claim to

such accolades, especially when the criteria are broadened. Architect and

professor Bill Hubbard convincingly, albeit narrowly, argues in his book,

Architecture in Three Discourses, that there are at least two other

perspectives on the creation of architecture: as an instance of aesthetic

32A Soul Practitioner...

order, yes, but also as an embodiment of values and/or an object to bring

about results. I would argue that this might very well be the order, should

architects rank these concerns in order of importance. Such is not

necessarily true for non-architects. Thus, one must question why architects

all but tether the value of their work—both within and without the

profession—to only one of the three discourses (i.e., aesthetics, with no

connection to expressions of social values, nor results)? As Kathleen

Dorgan, quoting Andrzej Piotrowski of the University of Minnesota College

of Design, will remark later in this book: “New buildings are frequently

designed to meet one primary requirement: to be photogenic. In these

cases, instead of designing a building for the way people interact with it, an

architect designs for, and benefits from, the effect the building’s image

produces.”3.18 Piotrowski’s observation suggests that generally, the

profession considers other reasons for creating architecture to be

incidental, or at best understood as following the first, when in fact, this is

not always the case. There are plenty of aesthetically pleasing structures—

high profile ones—that are quite non-functional and bring about either no

results or the opposite results for which it was intended.3.19 And these are

just the ones we hear about. “The paradox of architecture is that a building

ought to look good from the outside, but be usable from the inside. Some

architectural fashions do well on the first but fall flat on the second.”3.20 While

perhaps unfathomable to most architects, not everyone wishes to live by

design ideas.

Architects are people who are sufficiently moved by design

ideas to want to live this way. They feel not sacrifice but a

positive joy in enacting William Morris’ dictum to have nothing

around you that you do not know to be useful or believe to

be beautiful…They forget as well that even for a person with

the requisite resolution, the ideas they would resolve to enact

might not be design ideas.3.21

Many people have other priorities in mind. Sometimes architects offer

design solutions where they are inappropriate, because they believe that to

do less is to not offer anything, to not be held in the same regard as the

names above, to not be architects. The practice of design centers rejects

33

3.18 Andrzej Piotrowski. “On the

Practices of Knowing and Representing

Architecture”. The Discipline of

Architecture. Andrzej Piotrowski, Julia

Williams Robinson, eds. (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota, 2000), 56.

3.19 See the Architecture of the Absurd:

A Case Against Dysfunctional Buildings

by John Silber for a frank and

persuasive argument on this point.

3.20 Ian Steward in “A Conversation

with Three Scientists: Physicist Philip

Ball, Biologist Brian Goodwin and

Mathematician Ian Stewart.”

3.21 Bill Hubbard, Jr. A Theory for

Practice: Architecture in Three

Discourses. (Cambridge: MIT Press,

1995).13-14.

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out of hand any validity in that line of reasoning. Their concern centers on

the “scarcity of good architecture, not the scarcity of great architecture.

Great architecture has always been scarce.”3.22 The value of architects as

professionals lies in the making of habitable buildings and places. The value

of architects as artists lies in making aesthetically pleasing objects. I would

argue that the former is the most difficult and messy—and ultimately

where the real value, the justification for professional existence resides.

Without it, an architect is no more a professional than the person who

awakens one day with a burning desire to see his or her work in a

museum. They quit their job, buy paint, and work for years until they feel

they’ve developed enough skill and product to exhibit their work. The only

thing that stops them is the judgment of the critic and public. No license

required; no schooling beyond that which they decide to undertake. No

degree required; nothing more than a desire to do. That very person might,

on the other hand, decide that instead of making a sculpture for display or

writing a song for recording, they’d like to design a building for construction.

Should they be allowed to simply do so? Of course not—because there is

something beyond the simple desire and ability to design that is essential in

the title of architect. Architects are professionals—and that requires

something more.

[A]n architect is charged with resolving often

incommensurate demands. It is this activity, ultimately, that

justifies the architect's special status as a professional.3.23

Resolving those often-incommensurate demands begins with addressing

our own often-incommensurate demands about what it means to practice

architecture. As artists as well as professionals, our role in society is to

comment on the condition of its people. We are called to hold a mirror up

to society, to contemplate the world we live in and the people who

construct it—including, in particular, ourselves. In this manner, the artist

serves a crucial role in society. By moving away from judging the merits of

architecture on its visual aesthetics alone, to include its visible ethics as well,

the artistic justification for architecture’s professional status is exponentially

strengthened. Design centers base their work on this broadened premise,

34

3.23 Spector. The Ethical Architect, 6.

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As artists as well as

professionals, our role

in society is to

comment on the

condition of its

people.

3.22 Hal Box. Think Like An Architect.

(Austin: University of Texas Press,

2007), 51.

ethical as well as aesthetic, as a matter of course, every day, routinely

producing works that raise the head and heart.3.24

The Scientific Argument

To begin the “Architecture is a science, and thus the architect is a scientist”

discussion, I’d like to provide a working understanding of the term science.

As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary, science is “the intellectual and

practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and

behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and

experiment,” employing a specific practice based on the collection and

analysis of empirical data, often referred to as the scientific method.3.25 As

such, science is grounded in logic and reason—observe, hypothesize, test,

conclude, repeat, expand—a precise, exacting process of objective

understanding of the observable world.

Now to be sure, there are forward-thinking educators and practitioners

who do, in fact, employ scientific methods in their architectural work,

seeking new ways to build and testing new ideas on a consistent,

methodical basis that can be legitimately referred to as research. For a time

during Modernism’s heyday, in fact, a modified scientific research method

briefly became the design process of choice, especially in academic circles.

Nonetheless, as practitioners, architects are great users. They employ

technologies from a vast array of sources and apply them in ways that are

often novel. This is not at all a bad thing—on the contrary, it is a great

strength, demonstrating their unique ability to organize disparate elements

of the human environment into a comprehensive, creative whole. For the

majority of practicing architects, research in general—and the scientific

method of research in particular—is simply not part of their modus

operandi—design or otherwise. As a discipline, architecture does not

enthusiastically embrace or support scientific method. The photovoltaic

specialist is just a lighting geek to most architects—that is, until Kennedy

and Violich discover a breakthrough, whereupon we claim their individual

and singular achievement as part and parcel of what the profession

produces.3.26 The pre-fab modular researcher is simply a housing geek, until

35

3.25 Oxford English Dictionary. (NYC:

Oxford University Press, 1996), 1297.

3.26 Pilar Viladas. “A Lot-Ek Solution”.

New York Times Magazine. The

Architecture Issue. (June 8, 2008); also

see “A Bag Full of Sunshine: A Way to

Bring Electric Light to Isolated

Communities”. The Economist.com

(Dec 5th 2007). accessed December

15, 2014, http://www.economist.com/

science/tm/displaystory.cfm?

story_id=10241549.

A Soul Practitioner...

3.24 Bradley Guy, quoting Rex Curry in

“Community Design Primer.”

Unpublished paper for the

Environmental Leadership Program.

(February 2002). Community design

has been described as a:

[C]omplex set of activities including

architectural design and planning,

education and training, community

organizing, land and housing

development activities, research and

analysis and political advocacy, typically

on the behalf of lower-income and

inner city areas seeking to improve

economic and social conditions and

fulfill physical development needs such

as affordable housing.

Lot-Ek makes it to the front pages, at which point the Museum of Modern

Art becomes interested and we again take the opportunity to hail

architecture for its dedication to testing ideas.3.27 As a rule, however,

architects do not invent, test, nor develop technologies; researchers do. The

profession of architecture does have scientifically trained and Ph.D.-

credentialed researchers who make the aesthetics of scientific investigation

the guiding principle of their praxis, but as a group, this…is not what

architects do, in practice or academia.

While their universities changed around them into research

institutions, the architecture schools never really accepted

scholarship as their responsibility…that qualification is not

only rare but scorned in architectural academia. Who needs a

Ph.D .to be a great architect?3.28

Notably, the work of design centers provides a compelling response to the

contention that architects don’t do scientific research.

The practice of architecture emerges from both a specific socio-cultural

need as well as a desire to go beyond it, and its creation tells us much

about who we are as a society. Similar to the manner in which a spoon,

while coming in a variety of types and designs, is at its base fundamentally

grounded in our everyday actions and speaks to specific ways of living. For

example, one can convincingly argue the development of the spoon

evolved out of a moment in time when Western culture decided that

eating with an instrument was preferable.3.29 So too, is architecture an

artifact that speaks to how we live. Thus, architecture isn’t just for architects;

to the contrary, it is less for architects than it is for the society in which they

practice.

Because architecture responds to the larger question of who we are as a

social organization, I propose that architects who claim a scientific stance

should seek to emulate the social sciences of sociology, psychology and

behavioral science, rather than the natural sciences such as biology,

chemistry, physics and the like, although Christopher Alexander would likely

36

3.28 Gary Stevens. “USA Architects

Want Status Without Effort” Key Center For Architectural Research, accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.archsoc.com/kcas/statusnoresponsibility.html. Also, see Lori Thurgood, Mary J. Golladay and Susan T. Hill. US Doctorates in the 20th Century. National Science Foundation Special Reports. NSF 06-319. (October 2006), 3. The United States is unique in the extent to which fundamental research is conducted at universities, typically with the assistance of graduate students. Doctoral education is organized around an intensive, real-world research experience...American doctoral education produces cutting-edge knowledge and highly trained personnel who go on to fill specialized positions as teachers, researchers, and professionals in academe, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations.

3.29 Blogger Charles Davis, Jr. tells a

story of poet and urban philosopher June Jordan’s self-education in design, which included a perspective-changing encounter with a depiction of a spoon at the Donnell library:“At the Donnell I lost myself among rooms and doorways and Japanese gardens and Bauhaus chairs and spoons. The picture of a spoon, of an elegant, spare utensil as common in its purpose as a spoon, and as lovely and singular in its form as sculpture, utterly transformed my ideas about the possibilities of design in

relation to human existence.” June Jordan. “One Way of Starting this Book,” Civil Wars (Boston: Beacon Press, 1981), xvi-xvii. As first seen at Race and Architecture, blog, accessed December 15, 2014, at http://raceandarchitecture.wordpress.com/2013/11/26/writing-and-building-black-utopianism-representing-the-architextural-musings-of-june-jordans-his-own-where-1971/#_ftn4.

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3.27 Gabrielle Birkner. “MoMA's

Prefab-Housing Project” New York

Sun. (May 29, 2008); also see the

Museum of Modern Art’s website for

the “Home Delivery: Fabricating the

Modern Dwelling” exhibit, accessed

December 15, 2014. http://

www.momahomedelivery.org/.

disagree.3.30 I assert that the discipline of architecture has much in common

with these disciplines, sometimes referred to as the sciences of quality. The

work of design centers clearly demonstrates this commonality.

Design centers work methodically with social groups over time, discerning

and understanding the causes as well as the effects of a community’s

material conditions, and using that knowledge in a systemic, reproducible

manner to address the built environment. This is indeed scientific research,

designed to be shared, applied, and refined over time by other

practitioners. In fact, it is a design center’s ability to engage in this kind of

iterative, objective research that often prompts clients to seek them out.

When a community seeks the help of a design center—and particularly

when that community has been historically underserved—its members’

questions concerning design may encompass the narrow definition of

architecture as aesthetic practice, but are also typically embedded and

linked to a larger context of environmental concerns that a design center is

uniquely equipped to investigate.

The biggest nod to the scientific nature of design centers (and the social

science heritage of design research in general) lies in the nature and

applicability of its research across practitioners and disciplines. To quote the

biologist Brian Goodwin:

I take [the science of qualities] to be a major challenge now

for addressing many of the pressing issues with which we are

faced. This includes the design of buildings and housing, and

the way in which we use our land and resources in

sustainable ways.3.31

The efforts of practitioners engaged in, as Goodwin puts it, the science of

qualities can be seen in the growing popularity of its products like the

National Charrette Institute, the Environmental Design Research

Association (EDRA); Planning to Stay, by Bill Morrish and Catherine Brown;

the Design Studies journal; and The Community Planning Handbook, by Nick

Wates, as well as in the work of leading researchers like Tamara Winikoff,

Henry Sanoff, Wendy Sarkissian, and others. In addition, the development of

specific community design programs at the universities of San Francisco,

South Florida, and North Carolina State, as well as the growth of design

studies programs within the sciences themselves, are all indications are that

the intentional, conscious development of architecture’s social science

37

3.31 Bryan Goodwin in “A

Conversation with Three Scientists: Physicist Philip Ball, Biologist Brian Goodwin and Mathematician Ian Stewart”. Interviewed by Dr. Brian Hanson. Transcript published in Katarxis Nº 3, accessed December 15, 2014, http://katarxis3.com/Three_Scientists.htm.

A Soul Practitioner...

3.30 See Christopher Alexander’s

“New concepts in complexity theory arising from studies in the field of architecture: An overview of the four books of The Nature of Order with emphasis on the scientific problems which are raised.” (May 2003), accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.natureoforder.com/library-of-articles.htm.

legacy is likely to continue. As Daniel Friedman, Dean of the University of

Washington College of Architecture has observed:

[T]he hunger for solid research in the profession has never

been greater, and a long tradition of social scientific,

behavioral, technical, and evidence-based scholarship may

finally enjoy its proper audience.3.32

If design centers don’t participate in the social sciences—the science of

qualities—then the discipline itself just doesn’t exist.

The Practical Argument

Arguments over architecture as art or science are typically internal

propositions, more germane to the interest of architects than to anyone

else; to a large degree, their disposition is of little public importance. These

are not the arguments that architecture employs to establish its public

position as a profession. The critical one—the one that trumps all others

publicly and justifies architecture’s professional status—is the “profession of

architecture is sworn to protect the health, safety and welfare (HSW) of

the public”3.33 position, and for good reason.

It should be abundantly clear that the construction of buildings, from the

smallest treehouses in Sheboygan and Des Moines to the tallest hotels

dotting the skylines of Shanghai and Dubai, rightly falls under the interest of

public welfare. The people involved in such a critical and prodigious effort

must know exactly what they are doing; beyond that, the public must trust

that they do. Not only is the physical protection of the public paramount,

but so is their psychological protection, as it were: their confidence in the

architect’s work. Someone must be responsible for the public’s well being;

and it is the architect’s claim to be uniquely qualified to do just that.

A reasonable outline might be stated thusly: In the area of health, architects

make sure that structures built in the public realm won’t make you ill (i.e.,

won’t foster unsanitary conditions, damage the environment, contain

materials hazardous to health, and so forth). In terms of safety, architects

ensure that buildings won’t endanger your life by falling down, are

reasonably secure against adverse or catastrophic environmental conditions,

38

3.33 National Council of Architectural

Registration Boards (NCARB) Certification Guidelines Handbook. (Washington DC: National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, 2013), 2.“The National Council of Architectural Registration Boards, a nonprofit organization, is a federation of the architectural licensing boards in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These 54 boards constitute NCARB’s membership.“NCARB serves to protect the public health, safety, and welfare by leading the regulation of the practice of architecture through the development and application of standards for licensure and credentialing of architects. NCARB is responsible for establishing, interpreting, and enforcing national standards for architectural licensure.”

A Soul Practitioner...

3.32 Daniel S. Friedman. “Architecture

Education on the Verge” AIA Journal of Architecture. (July 2006). Vol 4, Issue 2, 8.

and are clearly navigable in times of emergency. Finally, in terms of welfare,

architects pledge that buildings won’t pose obstacles to the performance of

everyday life, but will instead give equal access to all users, provide natural

light, and offer views and other features that encourage well being. In short,

HSW means that structural interventions into the shared environment will,

to borrow a phrase from the medical profession, “first and foremost, do no

harm.”

But how are such promises secured? There must be an objective standard

that both the public and the profession can trust, as well as an objective

method of testing and monitoring that standard in practice. In the United

States as in many other nations, the building code is the answer to the first

and the building inspector the second.

Codes are basically standards that have been developed and disseminated

to ensure a basic level of compliance for all building types. Failure to follow

these rules can result in expulsion from the profession and, depending on

the severity of the infraction, civil and criminal charges as well. The

profession requires that its members follow codes religiously—as it should

—but based on its claim to professional status, this begs the question: Is

simply applying the code—already established by other entities—enough

to claim exclusive and proprietary responsibility of ensuring the public

HSW? It’s a valid question. Again, design centers provide a clear, viable

answer to this primary element of architecture’s professional responsibility.

Through their engagement with a broad array of issues in the built

environment, design center practitioners have come to realize that holding

to the letter of narrowly defined HSW concerns is no longer enough to

secure professional status. Primarily through their own indifference,

architects have allowed HSW to be controlled by entities outside of their

purview and, for the most part, simply consider their duties done if they

follow the regulations provided by these entities, Design center

practitioners ask how, pray tell, is that any different than anyone who

wishes to participate in the building process? Shouldn’t being a professional

require more—at least more than the ability to read and follow the BOCA

code? Responding to this question with a resounding “Of course it should!”,

design center practitioners posit that notions of HSW can no longer simply

39A Soul Practitioner...

be contained to the building itself. Concern for HSW must, by nature and

purpose, be extended to the built environment.

Health is not something that can be measured with an

instrument, though specific physiological measurements can

be useful in reaching judgments about well-being and disease

in bodies…we need to take responsibility for our actions as

participants in this creative cosmos…this is the lesson I take

from the new science, that goes beyond the post-modern to

a new form of ethical realism...3.34

Goodwin’s observations highlight a critical point that, by employing a kind

of ethical realism in their work, design centers raise

the possibility of locating within the profession a larger social

role—a role concerned with something beyond the beauty or

quality of the built environment. Architecture could begin to

serve as the locus for addressing some of society’s most

pressing issues, such as the conflict between public and

private property rights or the influence of high density on

human well-being.3.35

These are the kinds of concerns that legitimize the professional status of

architecture, not simply making sure a building doesn’t collapse. Since

Raphael Sperry, Stephen Vogel, and others will discuss this proposition later

in the book, I won’t belabor the point here. Clearly, the act of taking on the

ethical dilemmas of building must begin, not end, with simply keeping buildings

upright.

Architecture and Its Discontents

Understandably, the position I stake out is a controversial one—and has

been for at least half a century. Its main rebuttal takes the form of

something akin to this statement: “That kind of responsibility is way beyond

the scope of what architects are supposed to provide. I don’t want to do it;

I won’t do it—it’s not what I signed up for.” The simple response to this is

that as a professional, it’s exactly what you signed up for. And in today’s

world, it is even more important to acknowledge this and act accordingly.

40

3.35 Spector. The Ethical Architect, 22.

A Soul Practitioner...

Clearly, the act of

taking on the ethical

dilemmas of building

must begin, not end,

with simply keeping

buildings upright.

3.34 Bryan Goodwin, “A Conversation

with Three Scientists: Physicist Philip Ball, Biologist Brian Goodwin and Mathematician Ian Stewart.” Interviewed by Dr. Brian Hanson. Transcript published in Katarxis Nº 3, accessed December 15, 2014, http://katarxis3.com/Three_Scientists.htm.

In a time when rapidly developing communication and transportation

technologies facilitate greater linkages among formally disparate societies,

thus making vast amounts of readily accessible information—factual but

also often inaccurate, incomplete, misleading, or purposely false—available

to anyone who seeks it, the need for knowledge—the ability to sift through

and decipher the mounds of available material and separate the useful from

the superfluous—is ever more critical. It is important to remember that

information and knowledge are two distinctly separate things. While

necessary to reach for knowledge, mere access to information does not

inevitably lead there. This crucial point cannot be overstated. I reject the

notion that professions are increasingly anachronistic in an information-rich

world. My position is just the opposite: professions and professionals play

an ever more vital role in the exponentially expanding society in which we

now operate, because it is professionals who can turn information into

knowledge. Yet this is only one element in the argument for their continued

relevance.

Even further than the need for professional knowledge is the need for such

knowledge to be employed—to the best of one person’s ability— in a

manner best suited to ensure an overall public benefit. To do that, one must

be able to go beyond the limits of both individual and professional gain.

One must act within a larger spectrum of common concerns that include not

only one’s area of expertise, but those of other professions and their members

as well. This is not an insignificant responsibility, yet it is the choice one

makes when one chooses to join a profession. To abdicate that

responsibility is to engage in professional malfeasance, if not professional

and social suicide.

For these reasons, professional education begins as a liberal education, to

bind knowledge with judgment in the interests of the common good.

Engaging the broader questions of building is what keeps the licensed

practitioner in the position of legal authority, based on the moral and

ethical considerations from which the profession itself operates. However

uncomfortable one may be with moral imperatives, it is simply inexcusable

that the deeper ethical exploration of architecture has all but left the

building.

41A Soul Practitioner...

One must act within

a larger spectrum of

common concerns

that include not only

one’s area of

expertise, but those

of other professions

and their members as

well.

If it is true that the architect is hired at least in part to take on the ethical

dilemmas of building, can it truly be said that those questions begin and end

solely with what is legal, particularly when legal requirements change all the

time? How can a profession exist, as a profession, without a sustained

discussion about its ethical responsibility, which by definition goes beyond

legal definitions? Ethics are supposed to be messy. All professional codes of

ethics outline actions, but the exceptional ones attempt to define why

those actions are appropriate or not. By simply following the regulation

itself, one fails to understand the thinking behind it—and as a result, one

endangers the status of the profession itself. I, and others more

knowledgeable than me, argue that the notion of ethics transcends legality,

that what is legally correct is not always ethically justifiable. Professionals

must understand the difference and act accordingly. Where, exactly, is the

critical thinking necessary to ethical behavior, if one is simply following

codes and perhaps actually ignoring needs?

Long ago, professions like law and medicine embraced the fundamental

axiom that to deny someone access to their services diminishes their claim

to professional status and the monopoly on which it rests. Homelessness,

sick buildings, the aftermath of hurricanes Gustav, Katrina and Sandy,

concentration of poverty, spatial profiling, environmental injustice, redlining,

and the prevalence of the NIMBY mentality all across our nation and the

world, demand a significant shift away from the limited, and frankly self-

serving, interpretation of the profession’s HSW responsibilities. The role of

the professional architect is no different than the role of any other

professional: to balance the needs/desires of public interest with the needs/

desires of private individuals within the constraints of their expertise. To the

best of one’s ability, professional practice requires the exercise of the

highest moral, ethical, social, and fiduciary judgment for the benefit of all

who engage the built environment, even should that judgment signal an

outcome that is personally distasteful to the individual professional. As a

professional, one is always in service to the many, even if only a few or one

is financing one’s actions. As long as you ply your trade in the civic arena,

you are by very definition working for all people, and upholding the public

trust is paramount. Without it, the profession—the legally protected

monopoly over the stewardship of the built environment—ceases to exist.

42A Soul Practitioner...

As Tom Spector concludes, “Architects cannot have it both ways; they

cannot continue to expect to enjoy unchallenged public protection for

indulging themselves as artists.”3.36 It is a rare moment indeed when the

ethical and the practical align. On this issue, however, such is the case.

Architecture and Its Future

If this essay has given you the impression that I’m asking the profession to

give up anything it is currently doing, perish the thought. On the contrary;

I’m asking the architectural field to recognize what design centers illustrate:

that architects can—and must—expand their view of the profession’s

purpose. At the present time, the works of design centers are rarely

included in lofty critiques of the profession and its products. Why? Primarily

because, if one were to ask the typical architect, design centers “don’t really

do architecture” at all. Design centers advocate so many things that seem

foreign to traditional architectural education and practice that they are

often ignored or at best, tolerated. They engage in participatory design,

provide pro bono and discounted fee services, work with small, non-profit

clients often in distressed communities with shoestring budgets, and

unapologetically pursue social activism. Most design centers, when

discussed at all in educational institutions, are described as “alternative

practices” in polite company, and relegated to the kind of attention that

term connotes. Conventional architectural wisdom has determined that

design centers simply aren’t the kind of practices worthy of the finely

detailed diatribes found in most architectural texts or public debates. Yet, as

I hope this essay, and indeed this entire publication, can show, design

centers are not an either/or proposition for the architectural profession.

In fact, it is necessarily, just the opposite.

43A Soul Practitioner...

3.36 Spector. The Ethical Architect, 30.

Raphael Sperry

Health, Safety & Welfare for All

Underpinnings

A04

As any practicing architect knows, the founding principle of the profession

is to protect public health, safety, and welfare (HSW). Architects are

granted a professional license that is a monopoly on building design

because we agree to act in the public interest, and because the design of

the built environment is considered too important to leave to other

players in the design and construction industry who have no public

obligation higher than basic legal liability. An individual architect who designs

a building is obligated to ensure that the structure is entirely safe for the

general public, but what of our profession, collectively? And what of the

broader HSW problems that extend beyond the parameters of a single

structure? For example, the problems of suburban sprawl, inequitable

resource distribution and social disintegration, are increasingly identified

with environmental justice, but cannot be sufficiently addressed one project

at a time. The profession’s duty to protect HSW calls for a reimagining of

what defines HSW in the current landscape of practice: a duty of public

service and public engagement.

An obligation to public service and engagement is not exactly a new idea for

architects. As the American Institute of Architects (AIA) recognizes, public

service “[elevates] the stature of the profession of architecture in the eyes

of the public.”4.1 More consequentially, failure to display a collective

responsibility to public well-being has been costly to the profession. In the

course of suing the AIA for restraint of trade in 1972, the Justice

Department successfully challenged the AIA Standards of Ethical Practice,

noting that the vast majority of ethics violations filed were business

disputes between architects rather than real public interest actions.4.2 The

Justice Department banned AIA’s recommended fee schedule, forcing

architects into competition on price, showing that if the AIA was going to

act like an industry association in the area of ethics, it was going to get

treated like an industry association across the board.

45

Health, Safety & Welfare for AllRaphael Sperry

4.1 American Institute of Architects.

“Institute Guidelines to Assist AIA

Members, Firms and Components in

Undertaking Pro Bono Service

Activities”. part 1.0 , 1) http://

www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/

documents/pdf/aiab082967.pdf

(accessed July 17, 2014).

4.2 U.S. v. American Institute of

Architects, United States District Court;

District of Columbia, Civil Action N.

992-72.

An obligation to

public service and

engagement is not

exactly a new idea for

architects.

Within the context of delivering design services for individual projects,

architecture cannot avoid acting as a self-interested industry: this approach

is the primary way architects earn income, retain qualified staff, and get

clients. Although pro bono projects bring public service into this realm, the

sectors of society who most need pro bono services will continue to lack

access to them without a larger structure of public engagement, and, more

fundamentally, will continue to lack the money to build what we design. To

engage in public service, then, architects must go beyond individual projects

and advocate for larger programs that protect HSW through enhancing

and enlarging the public realm. Community design, the topic of the other

essays in this book, is probably the clearest example of public interest

architecture, and needs many more practitioners. Its relationship to this

enlarged vision of HSW and the professional role of architects is clear. This

chapter presents three examples that enlarge the concept of HSW in

different, perhaps more challenging, directions: the work of Design Corps,

Public Architecture’s One Percent Solution, and ADPSR’s Prison Design

Boycott.

Design Corps

Founded in 1991, Design Corps is a nonprofit organization that provides

architectural services primarily to rural communities that lack access to

design expertise. Past projects have included designing housing for migrant

farm workers and holding community planning workshops in rural towns.

Unlike charity projects, these efforts are a powerful critique of national

disinvestment in the rural environment and lack of commitment to

farmworkers’ rights. Design Corps challenges the status quo, demonstrating

not only that architects can make a real contribution to poor, rural

communities; but also that we should do so, with the theme that good

design should be accessible to all.4.3 The work of Design Corps answers a

resounding “yes” to the question of whether there is a professional

imperative to serve a wider audience.

The One Percent Solution

Similarly to Design Corps, the One Percent campaign encourages architects

to provide architectural services to underserved or entirely unserved

communities. Launched in 2005 by the nonprofit organization Public

46Health, Safety & Welfare for All

4.3 DesignCorps: Projects. https://

designcorps.org/about/projects/

(accessed July 17, 2014).

Architecture, the campaign calls on architects to donate one percent of

their time to pro bono service, and has developed tools to help link willing

architects with would-be clients.4.4 One of the early challenges facing the

One Percent campaign was to distinguish pro bono work, which is done for

the public benefit, from work done for free, such as completing a project

despite having run out of contract funds. This distinction is the crucial

difference between a profession and an industry; working for free is often a

business decision (for instance, to win a client), whereas working for the

public good is a professional responsibility. Citing the precedent of the legal

profession, where pro bono work is a regular part of professional practice,

Public Architecture argues that if architectural services are important

enough to the public to merit the establishment of a profession to protect

their application, then the profession is required to make those services

available for the good of the public as a whole. The AIA recently adopted

this position.4.5

Prison Design Boycott

The One Percent campaign argues for a program of collective action that is

profession-wide, placing individual participation in a larger context. The

nonprofit organization Architects / Designers / Planners for Social

Responsibility (ADPSR) assumes a similar vision of professional collectivity

with its “Prison Design Boycott” pledge, calling on design professionals to

refuse to design new prisons or jails.4.6 ADPSR’s campaign is noteworthy

because it calls on the collective voice of the architectural profession to

address an issue at the national scale. Within the sphere of prisons, ADPSR

asks architects to take responsibility for the total output of the profession,

rather than just consider each project solely on an independent basis.

ADPSR claims that what other architects do—in fact, what all architects do

as a whole—is part of the context for each individual project, establishing a

reciprocity between the profession and the professional that gives rise to

both obligations and opportunities. For example, architects use contextual

concerns to tell clients that sensitive wetlands are not an appropriate place

to put a surface parking lot, or that their proposed housing density is not

47

4.5 American Institute of Architects.

“Institute Guidelines to Assist AIA Members, Firms and Components in Undertaking Pro Bono Service Activities”. part 1.0 (1) and part 7.3 (14): http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab082967.pdf (accessed July 17, 2014).

4.6 Readers should note that the author

is the founder of the pledge campaign and president of ADPSR. For more on the Prison Design Boycott, see http://adpsr.org/home/prison_alternatives_initiative1 (accessed July 17, 2014).

4.4 Public Architecture. “The 1%”. http://

www.theonepercent.org/ (accessed July 17, 2014); “About Public Architecture”. http://www.publicarchitecture.org/ (accessed July 17, 2014).

Health, Safety & Welfare for All

within the community’s approved zoning. In these examples, however, an

architect can rely on the force of law to support actions taken in the public

interest. The Prison Design Boycott suggests that the architectural

profession has the same responsibility—and can have the same power—

when using our own ethical principles to protect the public interest.

These small but significant initiatives demonstrate the kinds of activity that

can reestablish the architectural profession’s position as champion of the

public HSW. If architects continue to wait for the law to establish what is right

or wrong for the built environment, then we add nothing to public protection

that cannot be achieved without us. These examples show how the

profession can be proactive, rather than reactive, in serving the public

interest.

Architecture inherently works one project at a time, but as a profession it

stands for more than just the shaping of one building after another:

architecture produces the physical surroundings that give meaning to

individual and community life. Crucially, it is only through the collective

output of the profession as a whole that the meaning of architectural work

becomes apparent. One must see a building in the context of its landscape,

society, and culture to understand the meaning our profession produces.

Protecting the public’s health, safety, and welfare is a prerequisite to creating

larger social meaning. This is often taken to apply only to one building at a

time, but it can and must be measured collectively as well. As the examples

cited above demonstrate, acting collectively includes such measures as

preventing destructive projects from damaging public welfare, and fighting

the ongoing denial of architectural services to communities based on their

inability to pay. After all, if architecture’s claim to serve the public health,

safety, and welfare does not include access to design services for those who

need them and the promise that the profession’s overall output will include

improvement of the public realm, then what does HSW mean? Expanding

the “meaning” of HSW allows the larger social meanings that architecture

constructs to be available and of service to all of society. Ultimately, if we

believe that architecture should be available to and beneficial to all, then we

must institute a professional ethic that engages architects in the collective

project of providing a safe, prosperous, and meaningful public realm for all.

48Health, Safety & Welfare for All

If architects continue

to wait for the law to

establish what is right

or wrong for the built

environment, then we

add nothing to public

protection that

cannot be achieved

without us.

Sheri Blake

Actions

A05

Defining/Redefining Community DesignA History of Community Design Centers

Community design is a term often used today to refer to neighborhood

planning or to participatory design. However, its roots go deeper than that.

The concept was born of 1960s anti-war and anti-poverty social justice

activism, and its definition is quite broad.

Community designers value both process and product. They seek to demystify

expert practice and at the same time learn to value local knowledge. Arthur

Mehrhoff, in his book Community Design: A Team Approach to Dynamic

Community Systems, explains that community designers understand that

design is not solely about "fashioning more handsome buildings, interesting

views, or attractive landscapes,” but also about providing citizens of local

communities with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary “to shape

their own preferred futures by acquiring and applying information and

knowledge about their communities in a far more systematic, thoughtful,

and democratic manner than current practice.”5.1 Community designers are

informed by an understanding of the complex issues of power, gender, race,

class, and related aspects of oppression and inequality, and take action to

overcome them. They strive to shift control of assets and power in the

decision-making process to structurally disadvantaged communities. Thus,

Flora Hardy and this author argue community design encompasses

aesthetics, affordability, accessibility (political, economic, social, cultural, and

environmental), collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing.5.2

The First Twenty Years

To a certain degree, the history of community design centers (CDCs) mirrors the

history of planning theory. Initially, both designers and planners failed to

acknowledge the socioeconomic and technical forces that shaped suburban

development and led to inner city decline.5.3 Eduardo Lozano, in Community

Design and The Culture of Cities, indicates that both designers and planners

50

5.1 W. Arthur Mehrhoff, Community

Design: A Team Approach to Dynamic

Community Systems (Thousand Oaks,

CA: Sage Publications, 1999), 122.

5.2 Flora Hardy first defined community

design as encompassing “aesthetics,

affordability and accessibility” in “Just

Design? The role of community design

centers in accommodating

difference” (Unpublished paper,

Brooklyn, N.Y.: Pratt Center for

Community Development, 1997), 2.

Sheri Blake extended the definition of

accessibility, beyond physical accessibility

and clarified that community design also

encompasses “collaboration,

communication and knowledge sharing,”

in “Knowledge, Skills and Attitudes

Needed by Community Designers” Plan

Canada 46-4 (2006): 43.

Defining/Redefining Community DesignA History of Community Design Centers

Sheri Blake

5.3 Eduardo E. Lozano, Community

Design and The Culture of Cities

(Cambridge, England: Cambridge

University Press, 1990), 7.

Community designers

value both process and

product. They seek to

demystify expert

practice and at the

same time learn to

value local knowledge.

often supported these forces by creating built forms, like high-rise public

housing and suburban strip malls, which contributed to further decline.

Giancarlo De Carlo, in his article “Architecture’s Public,” describes how the

design profession restricted itself to:

…relations between clients and entrepreneurs, land owners,

critics, connoisseurs and architects; a field built on a network

of economic and social class interests and held together by

the mysterious tension of a cultural and aesthetic class code.

This was a field that excluded everything in economic, social,

cultural, and aesthetic terms that was not shared by the class

in power.5.4

By the 1960s, a small group of designers and planners started to reject the

scientific rational comprehensive planning model and the “star architect”

system made so popular after WWII. As referred to throughout this

volume, Whitney M. Young, Jr.’s famous speech at the 100th Convention of

the American Institute of Architects (AIA) explicitly called upon AIA’s

awareness of the “white noose around the central city,” indicating that

architects shared the responsibility for the mess; the profession had

distinguished itself by its “thunderous silence” and “complete irrelevance.”5.5

Mary Comerio, in “Community Design: Idealism and Entrepreneurship,”

indicates that designers became increasingly aware of architecture’s

previous history as an “instrument of progress and social improvement”

with a focus on building schools, hospitals, orphanages, and housing for

factory towns.5.6 They began to recognize the integral relationship between

design and community development. As Mehrhoff notes, planners realized

that their focus on models, inventories, statistics, land use, and public finance

limited their understanding of the relationship between the built

environment and its social meaning. Ron Shiffman, in “Community

Engagement,” explains that local residents were tired of the experts who

believed “the masses just didn’t understand what designers and planners knew

was good for them.”5.7 Influenced by the civil rights moment, the War on

Poverty, activism against the Vietnam War, environmentalism, and a concern

about deteriorating inner cities, community designers emerged to support

51Defining/Redefining Community Design

5.4 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Architecture’s

public” Architecture and Participation, ed.

P.B. Jones, D. Petrescu, J.Till (Oxford:

Spon Press, 2005), 5.

5.5 Rex Curry, “Community Design and

Community Design Centers” (paper

presented for the annual meeting for

the Association of Collegiate Schools of

Architecture, Montreal, Quebec,

Canada, 1994).

5.6 Mary C. Comerio, "Community

Design: Idealism and Entrepreneurship”

Journal of Architecture and Planning

Research 1 (1984): 232.

5.7 Ron Shiffman, “Community

Engagement” Progressive Planning 166

(2006): 4.

initiatives related to neighborhood planning, affordable housing, and

community gardens.

Comerio believes community designers understood that technical

expertise could not solve public problems. Initially adopting Paul Davidoff ’s

advocacy planning model, community designers soon recognized its

significant limitations. Leonie Sandercock, in Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for

Multicultural Cities, notes:

The idea of advocacy planning was that those who had

previously been unrepresented would now be represented by

advocacy planners, who would go to poor neighbourhoods,

find out what those folks wanted and bring that back to the

table in the planning office and city hall.5.8

One of the first community design centers was the Architects Renewal

Committee in Harlem (ARCH). Established in 1963, ARCH involved several

architects from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of

Architects (AIA), who came together initially to fight a proposed freeway in

Upper Manhattan.5.9 Eventually the architects, as technical advisors,

recognized the limitations of advocacy planning; the community they were

trying to advocate on behalf of had technical skills, but no “power to

control action.” ARCH’s architects were attempting to represent a

community to which they themselves were outsiders, limiting the residents’

ability to organize and become proactive. As a result, by the end of the

1960s ARCH had to evolve “from a white organization to a black one and

the rhetoric had changed to focus on the issue of self-determination, of

political power supported by technical expertise rather than political

debate emphasizing technical analysis.”5.10 Perhaps due to similar concerns,

minority architects and planners established or led other early centers as

well. Richard Dozier, editor of “CDC Info” for the AIA in 1972, identifies

The Urban Workshop—the first full-time nonprofit professional

community design firm in the country—as being established by two young

52

5.8 Leonie Sandercock, Towards

Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural

Cities (New York, NY: John Wiley &

Sons, 2000), 89.

5.9 Paul M. Sachner, “Still planning with

the poor: community design centers

keep up the good works" Architectural

Record 177-7 (1983): 126.

5.10 Sandercock, 89-90.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

African American architects in 1965 in Los Angeles in response to the

Watts riots. He goes on to note that:

Their skills were used in developing a communications system

for the community, explaining various aspects of urban

renewal, urban planning and transportation networks. The

major objective of the Urban Workshop was to eliminate the

negative structural characteristics and growth dynamics of

communities in South Central Los Angeles as a base from

which to design and implement new approaches to

community and regional planning.5.11

In addition, the booklet lists the Real Great Society/Urban Planning Studio

(RGS) in East Harlem, New York, as opening in 1966. As the first Puerto

Rican CDC, RGS expanded the interdisciplinary model of CDCs to include

teams of architects, planners, community members, students, sociologists,

economists, and lawyers, while at the same time, recruiting trainees from

the Puerto Rican and African American communities. Further, the Black

Workshop was formed at Yale School of Architecture in 1968, becoming

“the first all-black group of architecture students to organize in a major

white school.”5.12 While working on community projects, they developed a

curriculum to deliver university resources to the community and educated

young architects about the social realities facing communities. Finally, in

response to Whitney M. Young’s accusations, the AIA created a task force in

1968, comprised of equal numbers of white and African American

members that “initiated the Ford/AIA Scholarship, an on-the-job training

program and a program for black architects to teach at black schools of

architecture. [Their support] led to the founding of the Council of Black

Architectural Schools (COBAS),”5.13 an effort that, in turn, led to the first

accreditation of three African American architecture schools in 1970.

Around the same time, more and more design experts began to realize local

residents had significant political skills, often better than most planners and

designers; the design profession acknowledged that their experts could, in

fact, learn much from the expertise of local residents. As a result, by the

53

5.11 Richard Dozier, ed., “CDC

Info” (Washington, D.C.: American

Institute of Architects, 1972), 7.

5.12 Dozier, 8.

5.13 Dozier, 9.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

...more and more

design experts began

to realize local

residents had

significant political

skills, often better than

most planners and

designers...

1970s public participation was on the agenda. Dozier notes that in 1966,

citizen participation in community development was mandated by law as

part of the Model Cities Program; a year later, Sherry Arnstein published “A

ladder of citizen participation” in which she explores eight levels from non-

participation (therapy and manipulation), tokenism (informing, consultation,

placation), to citizen power (partnership, delegated power, citizen control).5.14

Comerio believes community designers saw participation as an opportunity

for greater dialogue and direct involvement of everyone who had a stake in

an issue. However, they continued to debate ethical questions related to

who should participate, what process is appropriate contextually, and when

a process becomes manipulative or begins to exclude others.5.15 In the

1970s and 1980s, as advocacy planning evolved, a range of models and

theories also emerged that included, but were not limited to, equity planning

(building alliances between planners and progressive politicians), transactive

planning (mutual learning between expert and community client by

recognizing the value of experiential knowledge) and empowerment or

radical planning (working “for structural transformation” to address

“systemic inequalities,” with the goal of shifting the focus from planning for,

to planning with communities).5.16

The early 1980s signaled a shift in the manner in which designers and

planners in the field would operate for the next decade. Largely influenced

by Reaganomics, funding gradually dried up, forcing design centers to shift to

a more pragmatic practice. Moving away from trying to identify universal

and utopian solutions, CDCs focused more on local activism and direct

social service delivery.5.17 By this time, their primary client—community-

based development organizations (CBDOs)—had become sophisticated

enough to afford fee-for-service support from design centers. Large

community design practices, situated in university settings with institutional

backing, were able to conduct policy research and political advocacy, provide

direct service delivery, and develop training programs in community and

economic development. It is within this context that The Pratt Institute

Center for Community Development (PICCD) was established in Brooklyn,

New York in 1963. Generally believed to be the oldest continuing university-

affiliated community design center, PICCD initially began as an advocacy

practice, with professors and students providing support to local residents

54

5.14 Sherry Arnstein, “A ladder of

citizen participation,” Journal of the

American Institute of Planners 35-4

(1969): 216-224.

5.15 Comerio, 234.

5.16 Sandercock, 93-102.

5.17 Comerio, 234.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

and municipal authorities in planning and design. By the early 1980s, PICCD

had evolved to provide research for political advocacy, design and

development services, and education and training.

Independent nonprofits began to support themselves by operating small

businesses and training/education programs while providing direct fee-for-

service delivery as well. Asian Neighborhood Design (AND), a nonprofit

community design center established in 1973 in San Francisco, is one of the

largest and most successful such nonprofits operating today. Founded by

Asian-American architecture students from the University of California-

Berkeley to provide design services to the Chinese community, their

mandate and services evolved in response to changes in the community

development sector. By the 1980s, their activities included a small furniture-

making business for residents of single room occupancy (SRO) housing, an

emergency repair service for the elderly, a job training program in the

construction trades for inner city youth, education on energy conservation

with Chinese-language pamphlets, and the design and construction of

housing, playground equipment, day care centers, and offices for social

service organizations. AND’s goal was to combine service delivery with

community organizing. For example, AND recognized that an overall

upgrade of SRO housing would make it unaffordable for the tenants and

leave them vulnerable to becoming homeless. Instead, AND produced

furniture and worked with the tenants individually to fix up their interiors,

which in turn gave AND an opportunity to engage tenants in a discussion

about their conditions, rights, and responsibilities. Through these discussions,

AND was able to encourage SRO residents to be more proactive:

Two years after the program had begun, an elderly man called

the agency because he heard that they made small beds and

he wanted one. In his room, his present bed only fit one way

and the roof leaked right over his head. With a smaller bed,

he could position it in the other direction and avoid getting

wet. The agency told him that he could have the bed, but that

they would like to see his room and talk to him about the

problems in his building. To make a long story short, this man

55Defining/Redefining Community Design

organized the building tenants in a rent strike, saw the process

through the courts and won, forcing the landlord to repair

the code violations without passing the costs on to the

tenants.5.18

By the early 1980s, community design centers were involved in “small town

conservation, historic preservation, downtown economic revitalization,

management of neighborhood change, landscape and building assessment,

use of appropriate technology and alternative energy sources, local

landscape development, urban farming, and the shaping of urban policy.”5.19

They also engaged in social architecture (conscious design to support

certain social outcomes) design/build projects, and training for community

residents and CBDOs in management and maintenance of local parks,

housing cooperatives, and street improvements once the design and

development was complete. Community design centers also supported

community ownership and advocated for good design to expand public

environmental awareness. Stephen Sheppard, in “Monitoring Change at the

Grass Roots,” indicates that planners and designers were encouraging local

residents to carry out planning and design appraisals of their

neighborhoods, record important natural and human-made features, map

spaces including eyesores as well as changes over time, identify important

views, and collect oral histories.5.20

Through all of this effort, a distinctive community design style emerged.

Designers began to understand that the ability for an environment to

evolve is critical to good design. Realizing that design can contribute to the

creation of good places, the true test of success is in the social meaning

and local ownership a place develops over time. Francis believes this can

only be achieved by the ability to understand how past projects and local

experience have informed design decisions, to grasp how this translates

into design, to recognize the economic impact it will have on a

neighborhood, and to articulate a range of alternatives.5.21 Randolph Hester,

in “Process CAN Be Style,” articulates the design differences between

modernism and a practice that uplifts conservation and participation, and is

predicated on the user becoming an artist/architect.5.22 Community

56

5.18 Comerio, 240.

5.19 Mark Francis, "Community Design,"

Journal of Architectural Education 37-1

(1983): 14.

5.20 Stephen R.J. Sheppard, "Monitoring

Change at the Grass Roots" Landscape

Architecture 73-3 (1983): 54.

5.21 Francis, 18.

5.22 Randolph T. Hester, "Process CAN

Be Style: Participation and Conservation

in Landscape Architecture" Landscape

Architecture 73-3 (1983): 49-50.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

designers moved away from modernism and its focus on “joining materials”

to an emphasis on human movement and activity, not deciding the end

product in advance but allowing it to evolve through the process. Comerio

argues that this demonstrates how community design is different from

conventional practice; the focus is on client rather than building type and

on problem setting, not problem solving. There is a recognition that the

product and process are not clearly defined from the outset, and that

supports are bottom-up (grassroots) rather than top-down (government-

dictated), toward a goal of “political and enabling empowerment.”5.23 Hester

believes this type of design is flexible enough to support the incremental

changes that occur over time.5.24

In the early 1980s, community design centers that could not adapt

struggled. Unable to easily secure loans when their primary goal was

service delivery as opposed to profit-making, they were forced to search

out clients or initiate their own projects rather than waiting for CBDOs to

come to them first. As a result, many failed and closed down their

operations.

The Next Twenty Years

In 1977, local AIA directories listed almost ninety public service architecture

and planning practices.5.25 At this time, the National Association of

Community Design Center Directors was established as a networking

organization. (The name changed to the Association for Community Design

(ACD) in 1985.) This organization provided support to many emerging

design centers; however, due to funding constraints fewer than twenty

remained by 1987.5.26 This state of affairs persisted until 1994, when the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) created the

Office of University Partnerships (OUP), encouraging the development of

Community Outreach Partnership Centers (COPCs) at universities.

Between 1994 and 1998, ninety-five COPCs were funded to encourage

universities to collaborate with local communities on research, and many new

community design centers emerged during this period.5.27 The ACSA Sourcebook

of Community Design Programs at Schools of Architecture in North America,

edited by John Cary, Jr., documented forty-six university affiliated programs

in 2000.5.28 University-affiliated programs are often operated as part of a

57

5.23 Comerio, 238.

5.24 Hester, "Process CAN Be Style”,

52.

5.25 Rex Curry, “The Practice of

Community Design” Progressive Planning

166 (2006): 35.

5.26 Rex Curry, “The Formation of

Community Design Centers: Survey

Results” (Unpublished paper, Brooklyn,

New York: Pratt Center for Community

Development, 1992).

5.27 Marcia Marker Feld, “Community

Outreach Partnership Centers: Forging

New Relationships Between University

and Community” Journal of Planning

Education and Research 17 (1998):

285-290.

5.28 John Cary Jr., ed, The ACSA

Sourcebook of Community Design

Programs at Schools of Architecture in

North America (Washington, D.C.:

Association of Collegiate Schools of

Architecture Press, 2000)

Defining/Redefining Community Design

university department or a center that provides training opportunities for

students in collaboration with local residents and CBDOs. These programs

provide services at a minimum charge or have a cost reimbursement policy.

The COPC program funded initiatives related to job training and

counseling, housing discrimination, homelessness and affordable housing,

programs for mentoring youth, financial and technical assistance for new

businesses, capacity building, planning and implementation with local

residents, programs to fight crime and environmental degradation,

increasing a community’s access to information and education of students

to engage with community residents.5.29 The program continued to provide

grants until 2005, when it was put on hold for another review to evaluate

its effectiveness and to determine future programming parameters. As of

2009, general funding has not resumed for COPCs; however, funding

opportunities are being targeted by OUP for Native, Hispanic, and Black

institutions assisting communities.5.30

By the late 1990s, the work of community design centers had not changed

significantly. They varied in size, scope of services, organizational structure,

methods, and constituencies. Most design centers continue to be located in

large U.S. cities, and generally serve their immediate environs. Budgets have

ranged from a couple thousand to over three million dollars, supplemented

by in-kind donations. Funding is secured from a variety of sources, including

foundations and private philanthropic sources, government programs, local

chapters of the AIA, collaborations with professional design firms,

universities, fee-for-service, historic preservation programs, and private

corporations.5.31 Architecture, landscape architecture, and planning continue to

dominate the activities of community design centers. Staff skills include analysis,

grant writing, communication, and the managing of group processes, as well

as specific technical knowledge. Various centers specialize in participation

techniques, design and development, environmental sustainability, materials,

construction methods, project management, labor markets, community

economic development, environmental law, transportation modeling, or

housing regulations.5.32 In addition to collaborating with local residents and

CBDOs, design centers also work with a range of practitioners, including

engineers, interior designers, graphic designers, community and economic

development specialists, policy analysts, and others.

58

5.29 U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development, “Office of

University Partnerships: About COPC,”

http://www.oup.org/programs/

aboutCOPC.asp (accessed July 23,

2009).

5.30 U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development, “Office of

University Partnerships: About OUP,”

http://www.oup.org/aboutoup.asp

(accessed July 23, 2009).

5.31 Sheri Blake, “The Types of

Community Design Centres” (paper

presented for the workshop Community

Design Centres: Providing Technical,

Advocacy and Educational Support for

Community Development Initiatives,

Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada, 1999).

5.32 Blake, “The Types of Community

Design Centres.”

Defining/Redefining Community Design

Although university-affiliated and independent community design centers

dominate the landscape, a few private firms have also emerged with a

focus on community design practice. Pyatok Architects, Inc., established in

1984, is one of the most successful, focusing primarily on the design and

development of affordable housing. Hester, in Design for Ecological

Democracy, argues that Pyatok’s practice has challenged the typical isolated

large-scale rental unit with few amenities. Instead, the firm has developed

ways to integrate high-quality, low-income housing in-fill interventions that

add architectural value to neighborhoods and a range of amenities for the

occupants.5.33 This type of for-profit practice has its challenges, however, as

Kathleen Dorgan clarifies in “Diversity in Practice:”

…it may be difficult for a private practitioner to establish

credibility and continuing contact with the community.

Furthermore, private firms cannot apply directly for most

grants. Many private practices, like Pyatok, meet these

challenges by establishing close working relationships with

nonprofit community development corporations. In fact,

Pyatok has on staff a full-time grant writer who assists the

firm’s clients in pursuing the support necessary for their

advocacy and participatory work as well as for engaging local

artists in the design projects.5.34

Some volunteer community design initiatives also exist. In the 1960s, many

design centers emerged from volunteer activities, and volunteer initiatives

have continued to flourish over the years. A particularly notable example is

the Minnesota Design Team (MDT), a volunteer group of professionals who

work with small rural communities. They collaborate with a very diverse

range of expertise beyond the planning, design, and community economic

development realms. This includes, but is not limited to, anthropologists,

marine biologists, and specialists in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, and

tourism. As Russell Francis makes clear in this book, volunteer process can

be an effective way to galvanize public opinion, jump-start a revitalization

process and generate initial excitement and participation. However, there

59

5.33 Randolph T. Hester. Design for

Ecological Democracy (Cambridge, MA:

The MIT Press, 2006): 83.

5.34 Kathleen Dorgan, “Diversity in

Practice,” Progressive Planning 166

(2006): 12.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

are limitations. Rex Curry, in “The History of Community Design,” explains

that too often, volunteer processes become limited to “step one”: defining

the problem and a visioning process.5.35 Although it is possible to connect

the community vision to a plan of action, there may not be the capacity,

political will, or democratic mechanism necessary to sustain the process. As

Jacqueline Leavitt clarifies, the goal is not simply “to create a plan [or a

project] as much as it is to generate a political process that involves plans,

programs [and projects].”5.36

Today

Similar to CBDOs, community design centers have shifted from a primary

focus on community participation to integrating participation with

community building. The central theme of community building is a shift

from a focus on poverty alleviation to poverty reduction. Thomas Kingsley, J.

McNeely, and J. Gibson, in Community Building: Coming of Age, clarify that the

goal “is to obliterate feelings of dependency and to replace them with

attitudes of self-reliance, self-confidence, and responsibility.”5.37 At the same

time, participation tools and techniques have developed and evolved

significantly since community design centers were first established, and

from the time when Karl Linn and M. Paul Friedberg simply encouraged

neighbors to help them design.5.38 A range of authors have written books

and manuals on participation tools and techniques in both planning and

design.5.39 Resident groups are encouraged to be more proactive and take a

central role.

Some community design centers have integrated good participation

processes with community building. Detroit Collaborative Design Center

(DCDC), the engagement arm of the University of Detroit-Mercy School

of Architecture, was established in 1995. DCDC developed methods of

participation that include capacity building through mutual learning. A film,

Detroit Collaborative Design Center…amplifying the diminished voice, directed

by this author, highlights DCDC’s process of drawing out experiential

knowledge at the same time as it builds literacy in design and

development.5.40 DCDC has developed partnerships with a range of

agencies and specialists who can provide complementary technical

assistance or build additional capacity. For example, the Nonprofit Facilities

60

5.35 Rex Curry, “The History of

Community Design,” in Cary, Jr., 51-5.

5.36 Jacqueline Leavitt 1994, as quoted

in Sandercock, 98.

5.37 Thomas Kingsley, J. B. McNeely and

J.O. Gibson. Community-Building: Coming of

Age (Washington, D.C.: The Urban

Institute, 1997): 3.

5.38 Hester, “Process CAN Be Style,” 51.

5.39 In addition to books by Hester and

Mehrhoff, other key texts include: Roger

Hart, Children's Participation: The Theory

and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in

Community Development and

Environmental Care (London: Earthscan

Publications Ltd., 1997); Stanley King et al,

Co-Design: A Process of Design Participation

(New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold,

1989): William R. Morrish and Catherine

R. Brown, Planning to Stay (University of

Minnesota: The Design Center for

American Urban Landscape, 1999);

Henry Sanoff, Community Participation

Methods in Design and Planning (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, 2000); Nick

Wates, The Community Planning

Handbook: How People Can Shape Their

Cities, Towns and Villages in Any Part of

the World (London: Earthscan

Publications Ltd., 2000). As well, Wendy

Sarkissian has co-authored extensively on

this subject, in particular the Community

Participation in Practice series (Murdoch

University, Australia: Institute for

Sustainability and Technology Policy,

1994-2002) and most recently SpeakOut:

The Step-by-Step Guide to SpeakOuts

and Community Workshops (London:

Earthscan Publications Ltd., 2009). A

useful website is Deane M. Evans,

“Affordable Housing Design Advisor,”

http://www.designadvisor.org. (accessed

September 2009)

5.40 Sheri Blake, dir., Detroit

Collaborative Design Center…amplifying

the diminished voice (Winnipeg: Sou

International Ltd., Non-fiction

Documentary, 62 minutes, 2006).

Defining/Redefining Community Design

Center in Detroit collaborates frequently with DCDC. The director

describes how they walk CBDOs through the complexity of the

development process in advance of using the services DCDC provides:

I get phone calls regularly. I need money. I don’t need all the

other stuff. Can you help me out? It’s not about the money. It’s

about the commitment, the community, who is involved, how

committed is the whole community to the process….We

take [CBDOs] through a think cycle to measure and assess

whether they are in a position to develop the project they

propose to do…where is your market, where’s your demand,

where’s your Board capacity? Are you able to raise this

amount of money? Where’s the commitment? What kind of

study have you done?...These organizations are feeding

people; they are providing community services, health care.

None of them went to school to be a developer. We work

through funding, financing, real estate issues, design issues,

readiness issues, managing the team, so they are ready to hire

the right professionals to help them through the process.5.41

Redefining Community Design

Community design centers continue to face constraints. Projects can fall

short of goals due to political, institutional, or funding conditions. Similar to

CBDOs, design centers face the problem of funding tied to unrealistically

short time frames as well as a lack of core funding for administration and

overhead. Typically, more funding is available for capital projects and

programs than for process; as a result, compromises are made in the nature

and degree of community organizing and engagement, capacity building,

project evaluation, and research. Still, many community design centers

continue to provide critically needed education, as well as technical and

design assistance. For example, in affordable housing production, for-profit

developers reduce risk by focusing on strong markets. Nonprofit

developers do this by developing alternative or new public and private

funding sources for political action, capacity building, community planning,

61

5.41 Blake, Detroit Collaborative Design

Center…amplifying the diminished voice.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

and housing production. Community design centers contribute to this

process by developing organizational capacity while making sure the

relevant participants are involved in all stages of design and development.

Core funding is therefore needed for CDC administration and staff, or

assistance should be provided in the creation of endowments for sustaining

these types of organizations.

There are precedents for core funding of CDCs. Dorgan notes the Hamer

Center at Penn State University, Metropolitan Design Center at the

University of Minnesota, and the Carl Small Town Center at Mississippi

State University are all funded with endowments.5.42 Funders, politicians, and

policy makers need to refocus attention to the long term, which suggests

that funding also needs to be provided to marginalized communities to

collaborate with design centers, when they find themselves under attack

from developers and government agencies, and the designers who support

these constituencies. Pyatok adds:

In the same way that the justice system ensures balanced

representation by allocating two pools of public funds to

support both public prosecutors and public defenders, there

needs to be professional representation for those without

property when plans to alter our environment are being

developed. Those threatened must be organized sufficiently to

select their representatives and be prepared to develop their

own proposals for change independent of the sponsoring

agency's team or to make informed responses to those

proposals from a base of professional advice that they can

trust.5.43

Apart from funding, the sustainability of community design centers has,

since their formation, been under attack from conventional for-profit design

firms as well:

62

5.42 Dorgan, 13.

5.43 Michael Pyatok, “Comment on

Charles C. Bohl’s “New Urbanism and

the City: Potential Applications and

Implications for Distressed Inner-City

Neighborhoods – The Politics of

Design: The New Urbanists vs. the

Grass Roots” Housing Policy Debate

11-4 (2000): 812.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

Substantial pressure came from within the architectural

profession itself, which protested that community design

centers were an unfair, subsidized form of project

development. The intensity of criticism increased with the size

and nature of the individual projects developed.5.44

Unfair competition accusations by professional design firms have begun to

be addressed. In fact, community design centers open up new markets for

conventional design offices, by assisting in the creation of alternative

markets for investment and by ensuring fewer problems and costs during

development.5.45 Professional accreditation organization members are

invited to join the Board of Directors of their local community design

centers. Other centers ‘map out’ with private-sector firms what types of

projects they would or would not bid for, and seek ways to work in

partnership with for-profits. Some have created policy handbooks with

application forms, detailing an effective volunteer process with backup

support and the continuity they provide. A typical manual lists objectives,

describes the need for community design assistance, outlines application

procedures and scope of professional services, and suggests approaches to

volunteer recruitment and assistance, project selection, proposal

development, service agreements, and service delivery.5.46 In the past, the

Association for Community Design (ACD) developed a policy framework

to help guide design centers to reduce criticism from the for-profit sector.

The policy included criteria for selection of projects, income eligibility

guidelines, project qualification procedures, a code of ethics, and a

discussion about professional competition. The issue of professional

competition was supported by a policy statement drafted by the AIA in

support of the formation of community design centers, outlined by this

author in “Community Design Centers: An Alternative Practice” and

Anthony Costello’s essay in this book.5.47

More importantly, though, the CDC as a nonprofit entity has the right to

combine public and private investment in community development

projects. This was the essence of a strongly worded AIA policy statement

63

5.44 Curry, “Community Design and

Community Design Centers,” 8.

5.45 Curry, “Community Design

Centers,” in Good Deeds, Good Design:

Community Service Through Architecture,

ed. B. Bell (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2003): 63.

5.46 John Tomassi, “Community Design:

Volunteer Professionals Management

System” (Chicago: Chicago

Architectural Assistance Center, 1985).

5.47 Sheri Blake, “Community Design

Centers: An Alternative Practice,” in

Time Saver Standards for Urban Design:

First Edition, ed. D. Watson, A. Plattus

and R. Shibley (New York: McGraw-Hill

Professional, 2003): 4.11-7.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

that once supported the formation of community design centers. Curry

believes this policy needs to be revived:

Building the capacity of local corporations to engage in long-

term planning through advanced training programs and

networks is essential. Many of the firmly established

community-based development corporations in the nation

now have planning and architectural staff or have a good

business relationship with for-profit practitioners because of

early contact with a Design Center….Over the long run this

practice has removed one of the great barriers to an effective

community-based development process—the barrier of low

expectations.5.48

In particular, university-affiliated design centers continue to face many

obstacles. Marcia Feld, Richard LeGates Gib Robinson, Wim Wiewel,

Michael Lieber, and Sheri Blake identify a few of these obstacles, including

hostile communities fearing university expansion and an academic history

of using communities as study subjects; competition between universities

and communities for scarce resources; funding structures requiring

institutionalization of activities; top-down university structures that minimize

or ignore neighborhood institutions in decision making; limited time frames

within which collaborations are required to occur, resulting in incomplete

studios, unfinished work, and inappropriate research foci; and a university

structure that does not value community service.5.49 Integrating academic

goals with a dynamic community is complex. Cheryl Doble and Peter

Aeschbacher, in “Engaging Communities: Enriching Design Education,” argue

for dedicated resources and infrastructure to run year-round centers:

It is not an easy task to move students from the security of

the studio and to situate their design activity and education

within the community in a responsible and beneficial manner.

Student preparation requires time and must be thoughtfully

integrated into the academic curriculum.5.50

64

5.48 Curry, “The Formation of

Community Design Centers: Survey

Results,” 7.

5.49 Feld; Richard T. LeGates , Richard T.

and Gib Robinson, “Institutionalizing

University-Community Parnterships,”

Journal of Planning Education and

Research 17 (1998): 312-322; Wim

Wiewel and Michael Lieber, “Goal

Achievement, Relationship Building and

Incrementalism: The Challenges of

University-Community Partnerships,”

Journal of Planning Education and

Research 17 (1998): 291-301; Blake,

“Community Design Centers: An

Alternative Practice,” 4.11-4.

5.50 Cheryl Doble and Peter

Aeschbacher, “Engaging Communities,

Enriching Design Education,” Progressive

Planning 166 (1996): 21-2.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

In general, universities remove themselves from the framework of

implementation so critical for organizational learning and social change to

occur in both communities and universities. In Feminism Is for Everybody:

Passionate Politics, author bell hooks claims academic politics and careerism

‘deradicalize’ critical thought and processes. As a result, academics rarely

produce effective community-based studies.5.51 This could change, in part, if

universities place more value on professional public service in their ethics

review or tenure and promotion procedures. Barry Checkoway has

developed criteria for evaluating public service as scholarship, described in

“Professionally Related Service as Applied Scholarship: Guidelines for the

Evaluation of Planning Faculty.” He focuses on service that draws upon

professional expertise to develop knowledge for the welfare of society,

based on problem solving and capacity building.5.52 Thomas A. Dutton’s

essay in this volume, “Engaging the School of Social Life,” provides additional

insights into this pedagogical approach.

Pratt Institute’s experience with their planning program, in collaboration

with Pratt Center, provides some lessons for schools wishing to mainstream

community design programs as well. They recognized the necessity of

scheduling classes in the evening to allow access to staff of community

organizations and to provide opportunities for students to do internships

at the Pratt Center while getting a degree. Completion of their national

training program, run in collaboration with the Development Training

Institute, allowed participants direct access to the second year of the

Master’s program at Pratt Institute. This opened up greater opportunities

for graduate education to women and minorities in particular, encouraged

greater diversity, and provided more collaborative learning between

academics, professionals, community members, and students. A

commitment to integrating Pratt Center staff and projects into the

curriculum provided students with direct community-based experience

relevant to where the local community was, at a specific point in time.

Brain, et al., outline a similar approach at the University of Miami in their

essay in this book, “Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool for Both

Students and Professionals.”

65

5.51 bell hooks, Feminism is for

Everybody: Passionate Politics

(Cambridge, MA: South End Press,

2000).

5.52 Barry Checkoway, “Professionally

Related Public Service as Applied

Scholarship: Guidelines for the

Evaluation of Planning Faculty,” Journal

of Planning Education and Research 17-4

(1998): 358-60.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

Author bell hooks

claims academic

politics and careerism

‘deradicalize’ critical

thought and processes.

As a result, academics

rarely produce

effective community-

based studies.

Finally, it is important to note that community design centers also face the

problem of misappropriated, overused, or rhetorical vocabulary, resulting in

misunderstandings about the profession in the media. The term “clinic,”

sometimes used in the literature on community design, implies they are similar

to traditional legal and medical professional services in low-income

neighborhoods. These legal and medical services function to meet the needs

and uphold the rights of low- and moderate-income people. They are

primarily reactive, post-trauma services and are supported by public policy

that invests in technologically sophisticated systems, often resulting in

increased hospital, insurance, and courtroom costs. In contrast, community

design centers commit to a proactive partnership primarily with CBDOs in

distressed urban and rural areas. This partnership is intended to be

collaborative and is based on a trial-and-error process, composed of a

variety of small projects owned and managed locally. The community design

process, as Curry explains:

focuses on the opportunities of an organized and continued

resistance to the pernicious effects of economic decline or

structural unemployment….Community design centers that

have dealt with the crises caused by displacement and its

related problems will attest to the fact that the crisis

management process leads to "win-lose" situations. Whether

the threat is skyrocketing rents or a loss of services, the lack

of a long-term community-based [visioning, planning, and

design] process means too few "win-win" options can ever be

explored.5.53

Hardy believes it is necessary to catalogue the strengths of nonprofit

partnerships, like those between CBDOs and community design centers

and identify the resources necessary to retain those strengths.5.54 Funders

need to recognize the value that design centers bring in contributing to

design quality in marginalized neighborhoods, to the overall process of

design, and to effective community-based development through

organizational capacity building.

66

5.53 Curry, “The Formation of

Community Design Centers: Survey

Results,” 7.

5.54 Hardy, 10.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

The term “clinic,”

sometimes used in the

literature on

community design,

implies that CDCs are

similar to traditional

legal and medical

professional services in

low-income

neighborhoods.

Summary

Pyatok notes that design should not become a “cultural legitimization for

the inordinate preoccupation with property values held by elements of the

larger society.”5.55 Design certainly has a role to play, but design in and of

itself is not the answer. As Lozano describes:

Clearly, “better” design is no panacea for the ills of modern

society; it is a simplistic approach that disregards the limited

capacity of design to correct problems and often leads to

attempts at superficial “embellishments” of wrong solutions…

community design that builds upon the lessons of the past

and is cognizant of the complexity of current realities not only

can improve human environments and alleviate social and

economic ills, but can also help to reshape cultural goals.

These goals must be selected not on the basis of the

personal preferences of a single group, but on an

understanding of what a civilized pluralistic community should

be.5.56

Sandercock defines the need for a set of qualities rather than a shopping

list of skills, methods, and competencies that primarily define professionally

driven education. She identifies five essential literacies: technical, analytical,

multi-or cross-cultural, ecological, and design. These “form the acronym

TAMED, appropriately suggesting a frame of mind more humble, open, and

collaborative than that of the heroic, modernist planner [and designer].”5.57

She suggests a more culturally inclusive history of struggles over urban

space, connected to “the poetics of occupying particular places.” She notes

that understanding how design subordinates, excludes, or generates

positive social and psychological aspects does not make it deterministic.

Instead it “enriches its capacity to create meaning.”5.58 Design needs to be

addressed within the framework of community organizing, community

economic development, and capacity building, and recognized for its

limitations in contributing to social transformation. This requires greater

collaboration among planners, designers, artists, and communities.

Community design centers can serve as the critical framework for this to

occur, based on a long history of multidisciplinary and collaborative work

with CBDOs and local residents.

67

5.55 Pyatok, 810.

5.56 Lozano, 7.

5.57 Sandercock, 225.

5.58 Sandercock, 229.

Defining/Redefining Community Design

Stephen Vogel, FAIA

The Foundations of Community Design

Actions

A06

The Architect’s Dilemma

In an opinion regarding professional responsibility, former Supreme Court

justice Sandra Day O’Connor stated the following:

One distinguishing feature of any profession is that

membership entails an ethical obligation to temper one’s

selfish pursuit of economic success by adhering to standards

of conduct that could not be enforced either by legal fiat or

through the discipline of the market….Both the special

privileges incident to membership in the profession and the

advantages those privileges give in the necessary task of

earning a living are means to a goal that transcends the

accumulation of wealth. That goal is public service. 6.1

Unlike the legal profession, architecture has no ethical mandate that calls

on its practitioners to reserve a certain portion of their work for pro bono

activities—although the Anthony Costello’s essay in this volume speaks to a

welcome change in this area. As members of one of the lowest-paid

professions, yet with substantive legal liability, architects shy away from

clients who don’t have the wherewithal to pay for basic services, or who

are inexperienced in working with architects and may need significantly

more interaction with an architect, potentially consuming hours of

uncompensated time. These clients are often the poor and disenfranchised

who rarely, if ever, receive their full share of benefit from professional

services in a capitalist society. The public denounces doctors and lawyers as

mercenary when they turn away the indigent; yet to date, architects have

inexplicably remained exempt from such recriminations. The architectural

69

The Foundations of Community DesignStephen Vogel, FAIA

6.1 Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day

O’Connor, Shapero v. Kentucky Bar

Association (1988) 486 US 466 at

488-489. See the complete text of that

address in the appendix of this book.

The architectural

profession overall is

much more interested

in expressive forms

built of expensive

materials than it is in

helping the

underserved.

profession overall is much more interested in expressive forms built of

expensive materials than it is in helping the underserved. This concern was

voiced by the infamous statement of Whitney Young at the 1968 National

Convention of the American Institute of Architects, condemning the

profession for its “complete irrelevance…in (addressing) the social ills of

our cities.”6.2

It is particularly noteworthy that the American Institute of Architects Code

of Ethics and Professional Conduct Canon II: Obligations to the Public doesn’t

regard public service as anything other than upholding the law.6.3 There is

no mandate to provide services to those who need service the most; such

efforts are left to government, non-government organizations or nonprofit

organizations, a condition that Victoria Beach, AIA has famously deemed

amoral (i.e., exhibiting no objective ethical standard), and that severely

undermines architecture’s claim to professional (and thus, protected)

status.6.4 Everyone has to uphold the law, so what gives the architect a

professional status not obtained by the general public? Architects need to be

much more proactive in both defining and acting on ethical standards and

engaging in public service—something that separates them from the public

at large and that utilizes the many talents they possess. I argue that our

profession can gain the respect of the public—and ask the fees that signal

such respect—by being more visible defenders of the public interest.

Architectural licensing laws outline protecting the “health, safety and

welfare” of the public. Physical aspects of this requirement are easy to

delineate, such as assuring that buildings have proper means of exit in case

of fire or assuring that the air quality in a building does not cause

respiratory diseases for the occupants. Less tangibly but no less

importantly, architects must respond to broader social issues such as the ill

effects of sprawl on the health of individuals, the consequences of the

concentration of poverty, and housing that neither adequately serves

human needs nor dignifies the human spirit. Who quantifies the impacts of

these issues, and how does this relate to an architect’s ethical responsibility

to society? The answer to the first part of that query is, “no one within the

architectural profession,” which goes a long way toward answering the

second: Architects see these concerns as secondary to the task of making

70The Foundations of Community Design Centers

6.2 Whitney M. Young, Jr., Keynote

Address to the American Institute of

Architects, 1968. http://

www.designingactivism.com/

2011/12/31/whitney-young-1968-

speech-to-the-aia/. (Accessed

December 14, 2014)

6.3 “2004 Code of Ethics”, Office of the

General Counsel, American Institute of

Architects (Washington, DC,

September, 2004).

6.4 Victoria Beach, “Got Ethics?” Chapter

Newsletter Boston Society of Architects

(September 2001).

Architects need to be

much more proactive

in both defining and

acting on ethical

standards and engaging

in public service.

architecture. This, then, is the Architect’s Dilemma—a public expression of

the desire to provide public service, coupled with an inability or lack of

interest in actually providing that service.

Community Engagement in Architectural Education

At the 1996 AIA national convention, Ernest L. Boyer and Lee D. Mitgang

released their report entitled Building Community: A New Future for

Architecture Education and Practice. The impetus for this study was the

growing separation between architectural practice and architectural

education. This separation has two roots: 1) the profession’s concerns that

schools of architecture are focused only on theory and not application in a

professional world, and 2) the schools’ concern that architecture was

becoming increasingly irrelevant to the needs of the public, perhaps as a

result of professional architects chasing the dollar with mediocre work. Of

the seven essential goals outlined in the report, the seventh one—Service

to the Nation—is particularly relevant to the topic of this book. This goal

states that “students and faculty alike should regard civic activism as an

essential part of scholarship.”6.5

Unfortunately, at many schools of architecture, community engagement is at

best a secondary enterprise, looked upon with suspicion by the faculty as a

whole. This suspicion usually centers on the issue of design: faculty are

concerned that either community-based projects are “feel-good” projects

that do not require design expertise; or conversely, students who struggle

in design take community-based assignments, hoping to avoid the rigor

required for autonomous design. While there is some general truth to this

pedagogical concern, it is by no means a fait accompli; the Rural Studio at

Auburn, Dan Rockhill’s Studio 804 at the University of Kansas, and the

Detroit Collaborative Design Center at the University of Detroit-Mercy, to

mention a few, are all programs that introduce students to design

excellence while engaging with community-based needs.

Academia isn’t alone in its indifference, if not outright disregard, for

community-based studios. The profession has issues with this work as well;

yet the most ironic element of its resistance is the inaccurate belief that

71

6.5 Ernest Boyer and Lee Mitgang,

Building Community: A New Future for

Architecture Education and Practice

(Washington, DC: AIA Press, 1996).

The Foundations of Community Design Centers

Unfortunately, at many

schools of architecture,

community

engagement is at best a

secondary enterprise,

looked upon with

suspicion by the faculty

as a whole.

community-based studios are offering free services in competition with the

for-fee services of the professional architect. Again, there are some grounds

for concern in several key, but addressable, respects. For example, student

work should never be presented as professional work unless it is

supplemental to and managed by licensed professionals or faculty. But to

assert that community-based design studios are ‘taking business” from for-

profit architects is baseless, as community design centers invariably engage

in the types of projects for-profit professionals won’t touch. Furthermore,

community-based studios are a very real, tangible response to the

profession’s concern about the disconnection between training and praxis:

Community design centers are a meaningful, pragmatic response to the

concern that the academy only deals with theory and not its application.

Sometimes, the very groups such work is targeted to assist also have their

concerns with community design centers. Community organizations can

sometimes struggle with academic programs because they are, by necessity,

semester-based. The reality of community projects does not neatly fit into a

semester pattern, and many a studio have initially engaged very excited

community organizations only to leave them ultimately disgruntled because

the students and faculty walked away from the project at the end of the

term, regardless the project’s status.

Thus, the architect’s dilemma remains—can the profession or the academy

provide a moral purpose to the architectural profession in providing an

activist, civic engagement, and public service agenda? Although it may be

idealistic to think that both the academy and the profession are open to

this, and there is certainly evidence to the contrary, the premise of this

chapter is that both the academy and the profession can step up to the

charge, if only they have a means to do so.

The elements formulated above—good design for clients who do not have

the ability to pay, a non-semester basis of service, and a service to the

public agenda—are the foundations for the creation of community design

centers.

72The Foundations of Community Design Centers

Both the academy and

the profession can step

up to the charge, if

only they have a means

to do so.

Why Community Design Centers?

If the traditional profession is unable or unwilling to deal with the needs of

underserved communities and if students and faculty have pedagogical

obstacles to serving the community, then who can provide these

desperately needed services? This is where community design centers

(CDC) play an important role. The concept of CDCs as vehicles for

providing professional services to communities in need was first envisioned

in the early 1960s. CDCs can be found in universities as non-governmental,

nonprofit organizations. In each case, they have identified and targeted

specific community needs and are funded through external sources such as

foundations, government grants, discounted professional contacts, or

voluntary sweat equity. Like the clients they serve, CDCs often struggle for

funding.

At their foundation, these alternative practices of architecture have powerful

public service missions. They differ from traditional architectural firms in at

least three aspects: 1) they are mission driven, not compensation driven

(i.e., they have a public service mission that goes beyond making a profit);

2) they typically work with nonprofit or government organizations only; and

3) by nature they employ people who are very socially conscious and are

willing to make the sacrifice necessary for public service.

The services of CDCs run the entire gamut of physical or social needs that

might be found in any community—e.g., furniture design, graphic design,

interior design, product design, architecture, landscape architecture, urban

planning, urban design, design for the disabled, and design for the elderly.

Many also play an important role in making policy at the local, state and/or

national level. An enterprising few go so far as to engage in real estate

development in communities where for-profit developers will not work.

Although these design centers are often effective in filling the design “gap”

in communities, there’re not nearly enough to deal with the issues facing

both our urban and rural poor. Money’s in short supply for such ventures. It

would not be illogical to conclude that the inadequate funding of CDCs is

related to the prevailing view that design is not a critical component in

community sustainability, thus failing to rise to the level of health, education,

social services and other programs that compete with design centers for

charitable dollars.

73The Foundations of Community Design Centers

What Are Community Design Centers?

There are basically three different models for CDCs:

1. Stand-alone alternative practices, usually non-profit. These practices are

typically funded from contracts and supplemented by grants from

foundations, individuals, and corporate entities.

2. Practices within the academy. Theses CDCs are formed to fulfill the

public mission of universities or schools of architecture, and are primarily

funded by contracts and grants and supplemented through low-cost or free

services of students and faculty. The university may also provide indirect

expenses such as space, utilities, and the like to advance the university

mission of community engagement.

3. Practices in the profession. These CDCs are typically outreach programs

of the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects. They may be

funded by contracts and grants but are frequently supplemented through

volunteer labor from professional architects. This can be a very powerful

model if only because it is not unusual for the architectural profession to

oppose design centers, seeing them as competition to professional

architects because they “steal clients” with low fees or free services. If the

mission of a design center is truly to serve the underserved, then this

should not be an issue; design centers should be creating projects for the

profession where projects didn’t previously exist, or doing projects that

other professional architects would never do. The reasoning is that if

architects see this project development up close and personal, the

resistance to CDCs would rapidly dissipate.

Of course, as so often is the case in alternative practices, some CDCs are

hybrids of all of the above. There are advantages to both types of

partnering—universities can provide a stable base of operations, and the

profession, especially large firms, can provide a level of service that may be

unattainable in small design centers.

As a case study, the Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC), a

university-based center, is a hybrid model where the university partners

with professional architects. When the center was formed the mission and

concept for the center was presented to the local chapter of the American

74The Foundations of Community Design Centers

Institute of Architects to receive their “buy-in” and support. The AIA was

asked to provide mentors to work with students on community-based

projects—which they readily did. Finally, a program was established with

architectural firms where the firms were the “architect of record” for

projects that were funded for implementation and either partnered with

the DCDC through the initial design stages of the project or the project

was totally turned over to the firm after the funds were raised to complete

the project

What is interesting about this approach is that firms are invariably,

regardless of size, interested in performing community-based work. Larger

firms have also been willing to work on these projects even if they only

received fees that allowed them to “break even,” defying the commonly

held belief that firms are egocentric and not interested in public service. If

their losses can be reasonably controlled, firms are willing to participate.6.6

There are several reasons for seriously exploring how the CDC model can

align the academy and the profession in the service of the community. First,

universities usually feel an obligation to the community in which they have a

campus. They are often a major “player” in the community and feel it is

politically expedient to engage the community directly with the university’s

primary resource--intellectual power. Second, many pedagogic objectives

can be attained through community engagement, including opportunities

for students to participate in leadership roles, engage the “real world” of

practice, and test research theories. Finally, community engagement is a

great source of positive publicity for the university that can directly lead to

increased enrollment, funding opportunities, and good will. What is

particularly appealing about community design centers is that the work is so

visible, either in its graphics and models or in its actual construction. Because

they are engaged in practice in the school, students more readily see the

faculty at work on real projects, and the faculty can use these projects as

case studies in the classroom, building their credibility with students as

practicing architects, not only professors. There is also a potentially large

research agenda, both in architecture and community building that CDCs

can pursue. Another aspect of university-based CDCs is that they may be

viewed by the public or by government as “neutral.” That is, they can be

75

6.5 The architectural profession has also

been impressed with the DCDC’s

comparison of itself to a teaching

hospital, its use of the latest standards

of the profession, and its preparation of

its interns and coop students. The

DCDC has become an outstanding

provider for the Intern Development

Program (IDP). DCDC staff members

have gone on to architectural firms and

have been praised as being outstanding

and well-trained employees. In this

sense the Detroit Collaborative Design

Center is not only providing the firm

with potential future work, but also with

future employees.

The Foundations of Community Design Centers

What is particularly

appealing about

community design

centers is that the

work is so visible,

either in its graphics

and models or in its

actual construction.

engaged for politically sensitive projects where everyone can be

comfortable that the consultant is not a “hired gun” for one side of an issue

or another. In this way it is possible to push the design agenda to an even

higher level. However, university-based CDCs must navigate three primary

stumbling blocks to be successful: professional liability, the implications of free

student labor, and poor design quality.

The first —professional liability—is ironic, since many universities have

hospitals, dental clinics, or law clinics, which have liability issues much greater

than is typical in the design professions. Where a professional architectural

firm is the architect of record, it can provide the professional liability

insurance for the project.

As to the second, if students are going to work with a design center for

academic credit and not be paid, then it should be made very clear to

clients when they are not getting true professional services by licensed

architects. This issue is particularly prevalent for design-build projects where

it may be difficult in an academic studio to sort out the pedagogy of a

design-build project where the student only works on the build aspect of

the project but does work through design issues with a client.

The third point must be discussed in context. The primary criticism of

CDCs from both members of the academy and the profession is that the

quality of design is poor; that design centers tend to attract people who

are activists first and designers second. However, for-profit firms do not

have a monopoly on “good design.” Good design is something that both

the profession and design centers, regardless of their names, may or may

not always practice. Design centers can fall into the same trap as

professionals, sacrificing excellence in design because they place value on

other elements of the process such as “getting it built no matter what.”. In

the case of some design centers, their mission may include providing

services not specifically related to building design, such as facilitating

community participation, seeking funding for affordable housing, and the

like. Thus, outstanding practitioners, as well as faculty, tend not to participate

in design centers. However, the best design centers live up to their names

76The Foundations of Community Design Centers

CDCs must navigate

three primary

stumbling blocks to be

successful: professional

liability, the

implications of free

student labor, and poor

design quality.

and actually employ cutting-edge designs to solve community problems.

Educating the community about the qualities of good design can also be

part of the mission of design centers—the center can create educational

programs and processes that are specifically geared to community

education about design.

Words Matter

Clearly, there is a need for CDCs. Within the profession, architects need to

promote the idea that marginalized communities require good design as

much as or even more so than wealthy communities; understanding,

however, that their approach, including their descriptions of the work, must

not perpetuate privilege and power. This is particularly true when the

design center staff is white and the clients are people of color.

Many architects, faculty, and students have a tendency to use condescending

words when presenting architectural projects; the implication is that “we know

what is best” for you. The word “service,” for example, is extremely charged.

When an organization provides service to a community, it implies that the

community needs the expertise that others don’t possess. Other words,

such as “engagement” or “partnering,” are more descriptive and lead to a

more accurate way to frame the relationship between architect and

community as a two-way street. Yes, a design center may have a certain

level of expertise it brings to the work, but so does the community

organization requesting the design center’s work. The members of the

organization understand the people and programmatic issues in their

neighborhood or section of the city much better than the design center

does. When the design center engages or partners with the community, it is

better able to work with the community to achieve the goals of the

project.

Many CDCs have developed techniques for community engagement in the

design process, such as charrettes, workshops, and the like. These techniques

are meant to engage the participants as integral elements of the design

process and ensure all voices are heard. When this happens, it is a true win-

win situation. When well conceived, this process can create cutting-edge

design solutions that are very specific to the community. In the most ideal

77The Foundations of Community Design Centers

scenario, participants would be able to present the final design as if they

did it all themselves.

Summary

Design centers must provide the same quality of design and service that high-

end professional firms provide their wealthy clients. Properly founded, CDCs

perform a public service that the profession and the schools of architecture

have difficulty filling, and perhaps even provide a model on how this work

can change the nature of practice and education. They can be a truly

alternative form of practice with major impacts on society as a whole. To

realize this promise, they must follow a set of principles that will help

students and architects to see the public duty, professional value, and

potential personal fulfillment of community work.

Community design centers must have a clear mission that addresses

community needs not met by others, and they must bring good design into

arenas that have not previously had access to it. They must clearly

distinguish for the profession that what they do is intended to complement

and not compete with what private firms can do, thereby encouraging the

profession to change its view of this work, and perhaps even increase its

participation. If this comes to pass, then Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s

mandate can become a reality: Architecture can take its place as a true

profession.

78The Foundations of Community Design Centers

Design centers must

provide the same

quality of design and

service that high-end

professional firms

provide their wealthy

clients.

Dan Pitera, FAIA

The Activity of ActivismA Field Guide for Establishing a Design Center

Actions

A07

In the introduction, I began to outline a definition for a design center as

something that expands the practice of place making. If this potentially

underlies all centers, then it is not enough for a center to place this position

as the only item on its ideological agenda. Each center must become more

specific and relevant to the context it engages. 7.1 Each center needs to

determine where it will expand their practice with respect to people,

projects, and geographies in order to make place.

This chapter establishes a decision-making process for setting up a design

center that meets the needs and circumstances of the surrounding

communities, whether these communities are local, regional, national, or

international. I know what you are thinking: “Can’t you just tell me what the

typical design center has, and I can start there?” Since it is a requisite for a

design center to be specific and relevant to the context it engages, there is

no single typical business plan. For a design center, anything typical is a myth.

So instead of listing what to do, this chapter provides a method of thinking

to assist you in making decisions.

Steps 1 and 2: Listen/Synthesize/Make

Step 1: Listen and Synthesize. There are essentially three places from which

the content and direction of a design practice are derived:

• The interest of the principals and staff,

• The expertise of the principals and staff, and

• The market pressures.

These are also the same for any design center. The first two items are fairly

obvious, while the third may be understood, but a bit ambiguous. Often,

design centers begin with their passion and expertise for doing good

meaningful work and forget to ask the stakeholders in the community to

80

The Activity of ActivismA Field Guide for Establishing a Design Center

Dan Pitera, FAIA

7.1 Context is defined here as more

than adjacent buildings and

surrounding aesthetics. Context is the

essence of a place—its genus loci. It

includes history, tradition, culture,

philosophy, anthropology, and

practices that are embodied in how

the place is experienced and used.

help determine what kind of work the center should engage. So, before

making such a critical decision, Ask the community. Do not assume to know

what is needed. Ask the obvious questions: Who is the community engaged

by the center? Is it local to a city or a district within a city? Is it regional?

Does the center extend to a national or international agenda? The Detroit

Collaborative Design Center [DCDC] focuses on Detroit for

approximately 90 percent of its projects. But it has worked in places like

New Orleans, New York City, Los Angeles, and Dallas. It does this as a way

to perform urban reconnaissance: working in these other contexts helps

the staff of the DCDC better understand the context in Detroit. The

academically based Miami University Center for Community Engagement’s

epicenter is specifically the Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnati. Its physical

location is on Vine Street within this neighborhood, although the university’s

campus is in Oxford, Ohio, about an hour away. The work and clientele

parameters of both the DCDC and MUCCE emerged out of critical

thought and extended conversation within the community with which they

engage.

Step 2: Synthesize and Make. Once a defined community is established, it is a

good idea to facilitate some type of collective engagement with its

stakeholders (i.e., a participatory workshop, residents’ roundtable, day-long

retreat, and so forth). This will help define what the community needs are,

what kind of center residents would like, and where would they like it.

When the Detroit Collaborative Design Center was established, its

founders believed that the “community” of Detroit would like the center to

be located off of the university campus and within the neighborhood; in

fact, the opposite was true. Through a series of facilitated workshops, we

learned several things, including that the stakeholders strongly preferred

that the center be located on campus. This way, they had a choice to leave

their surroundings to think about their neighborhoods’ future, or they could

remain immersed within their neighborhoods if the DCDC staff came to

meet with them. Either way, the choice would be theirs.

Several outcomes from this decision became evident. First, the immediate

proximity of the Design Center in the School of Architecture gives a more

direct opportunity for student engagement with the DCDC, as well as

81The Activity of Activism

Ask the obvious

questions:

giving members of the community opportunities to engage with the

students. It also keeps the activities of the DCDC visible and tangible to all

at the university, including administration and staff. The DCDC is not

forgotten—not vulnerable to being “out of sight; out of mind.”

The participatory workshop process has at its core the idea that creative

making comes from the synthesis of creative listening and creative thinking.

Workshops are not a method to achieve specific and particular responses.

They are a series of designed activities that are active and meaningful to

encourage dialogue that potentially reveal hidden intentions, agendas,

desires, and needs. 7.2 They should not attempt to put words into the

stakeholders’ mouths; their aim is to listen to the words of each stakeholder

and find connections and relationships that reveal other possibilities. 7.3

Case in point: the Detroit Collaborative Design Center was in the process

of designing a public recreational park in Southwest Detroit when the

stakeholders requested to surround the perimeter of the park with a six-

foot iron fence. The facilitators and designers cannot take a specific

directive like this at face value. When we probed a bit deeper, we learned

that the fence was their design solution to handle a larger and very specific

issue. The park currently exists as a large open area of dirt and grass, about

two-thirds of a city block. Drivers jump the curb in their vehicles and do

“donuts” there, ripping up the grass. To the stakeholders, the sole solution

was to surround the park with a fence. We shared with them through

design drawings and precedent images that striating the park with varied

grade changes, particularly at the perimeter of the park, would cause the

vehicles to “bottom out” (Figures 1,2). The result of this probing is a design

for the park environment that feels open and inviting, while not being

susceptible to vehicle trespassing, which is ultimately what the residents

were trying to achieve with the fence. It is the responsibility of the

workshop facilitators and designers to filter through the information

(creative listening), synthesize it and find connections (creative thinking), and

develop a series of recommendations (creative making).

It is important from the start to define a methodology of community

engagement where mutual knowledge sharing is the core as opposed to

community service that establishes a hierarchal working relationship with

82The Activity of Activism

7.2 The key words here are “active” and

“meaningful.” Just because an idea or a

series of ideas are presented to “the

public” for their comments does not

make for an active and meaningful

process. For a process to effectively

engage its participants, it should follow a

basic set of criteria similar to the

following: 1. The process should be limited

to 15-20 people. It should not be a

lecture to 50-200 people. If there are

more than twenty people, the number

should be broken down into smaller

groups. 2. The process should include

varied methods for people to engage in

the decision-making. This allows those

with varying levels of comfort with “public

speaking” to have an opportunity for their

voices to be heard. 3. There should always

be a mutual knowledge sharing between

all people involved and in all aspects of

the project. Thus, the designers are not

merely taking notes, they are learning as

much as everyone else. 4. There should be

sincerity in the process. Sincerity brings

trust. Trust uncovers information that may

never be revealed in more traditional

processes. This information can become

the key element that allows the design to

truly engage its stakeholders.

7.3 This chapter will not discuss the

methods of workshop delivery or other

participatory design processes. There are

significant resources available centering on

this topic. In short, there are methods of

working with people and methods for

people working. Or there are ways of

bringing people together and what do

you do once they are there. Please refer

to Henry Sanoff. Community Participation

Methods in Design and Planning. (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000). Nick

Wates. The Community Planning

Handbook. (London: Earthscan

Publications Ltd., 2000). and the video

documentary: Sheri Blake. Detroit

Collaborative Design Center : Amplifying

the Diminished Voice. (Winnipeg, Canada:

Sou International Ltd., 2006).

the design center at the top. 7.4 I make this distinction because several

centers use the word service, when what they really mean to say is

engagement. When community stakeholders hear the word service, they

hear an underlying subtext that suggests they are incapable of defining and

maintaining the direction of their neighborhoods, and we outsiders are

needed to help them escape certain disaster. Removing the notion of

service from the process helps establish a meaningful engagement with the

community, versus the community feeling like they are the subjects of

scientific experiments. In Detroit, we have heard neighborhood residents

use the phrase “lab rats” countless times when referring to the methods

and means many universities use when working in the city. Tom Dutton, in

his essay, “Engaging the School of Social Life,” explains it this way:

“Communities…are too often positioned as deficient, as

places in need of treatment that can use a hefty dose of

university-medicine. This one-directional discourse—from

university to community—ignores the fact that universities

have much to learn from communities that are already

producing knowledge and struggling to enact democratic

practices based upon that knowledge.”

Successful centers keep this firmly in mind.

83The Activity of Activism

7.4 Mutual knowledge sharing is

defined for the purposes of this essay

as the exchange of information across

all participants where everyone is

giving and receiving, including the

Figure 1

Step 3: Mapping the Territory

As a way to help make specific recommendations on a center’s mission,

structure, and direction, based on the information gathered from various

workshops, a series of diagrams have been developed (Figures 3 through

20). They are tools for facilitating the process of making decisions that are

important to the type of work design centers do. This chapter guides the

process of setting up the design center. Once a center is in operation, these

diagrams will also help reflect on how it is performing its stated goals. Each

diagram serves as a method of designing and evaluating the center, which is

integral to its business and strategic plan. Their use not only can help the

center stay on track, but also allows for periodic review of its work.

To understand the nature of these particular diagrams, it is important to

realize that they do not define specific decisions that are either/or. They

tend toward the both/and. Their content is directed towards shades of gray;

the answers pinpointed on each diagram are a matter of degree. For

instance, an answer listed on a chart may help determine tasks for which

the center will use professional staff instead of students, or indicate to what

84The Activity of Activism

Figure 2

degree the center will provide design assistance versus mediate between

designers and clientele. Each diagram will establish a matrix of decisions

forming an operational structure. 7.5

Step 3a: Organizational Matrix: Who we are.

The Organizational Matrix (Figure 3) sets up two axes of relational dualities

(Figure 3). Axis 1 is the Professional Office and/or Academic Department,

and Axis 2 is the Project-Based Center and/or Research-Based Center.

These lines do not separate, but connect and establish a field for making

decisions. As stated previously, the charts tend toward the both/and, as well

as shades of gray. This suggests that the responses marked on this matrix

85The Activity of Activism

Organizational Matrix

Professional Academic

Pro

jects

R

esearc

h

50/50

100%

Aca

dem

ic0%

Pro

fess

iona

l

100% Research 0% Projects

0% A

cade

mic

100%

Pro

fess

iona

l

0% Research 100% Projects

Figure 3

Organizational MatrixVisit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Please see the end of the chapter

for Diagrams filled in the the

Detroit Collaborative Design

Center (DCDC) Information.

7.5 The order in which the diagrams

are defined in this essay does not

reflect the order in which they should

be considered. In fact, working with

each chart may not be a linear task.

You may work on each diagram

simultaneously, because the content

of one diagram will directly relate to

another, and visa versa.

may not be exactly on either axis; but will most likely be within the green

and gray Cartesian field defined by the axes.

Axis 1: Professional/Academic

Etymologically speaking, when someone operates in a professional context,

they are making a “public declaration.” 7.6 The history of the word professor

means that you have something to “profess…lay claim to, declare openly.” 7.7

The distinction between professional and academic centers is more than

whether or not they are located in the academic institution. This is meant

to illustrate that design centers are not entirely academic or professional. In

most centers, lines between these labels are less distinct and continuously

shifting. The Professional/Academic axis defines the structural composition

of the center : Is it in a university context and to what degree does the

design center connect to other university departments? A center that uses

only students as staff, is based on the semester system, and works within

the studio context may be primarily academic and less professional [see

the Operational Barometer at Figure 12 for more discussion on these

conditions].

The Community Design Center of Pittsburgh [CDCP] is an independent

nonprofit organization not directly affiliated with a university or other

professional organization. It provides grants, technical assistance, and

educational programs. It often mediates between nonprofit organizations

and professional designers. Though the CDCP is not within a university

context, it has collaborated with Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) to

help deepen the process. The CDCP’s President/CEO has also taught in the

CMU program. Other staff members have taught at Chatham University's

Graduate School of Landscape Architecture.

The Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC) is an academic program

within the University of Detroit-Mercy School of Architecture. Although

the DCDC is in the academic context, its organizational structure is

essentially modeled after a professional design office. It is not based on a

semester system. It does not take summers off. It has a full-time

professional staff of approximately eight people, with an additional two to

three students as full-time employees. The full-time professionals remain

86The Activity of Activism

7.6 http://www.etymonline.com/

index.php?term=profession (accessed

January 15, 2015).

7.7 http://www.etymonline.com/

index.php?term=professor (accessed

January 15, 2015).

constant, while the students are replaced every semester. This makes a total

of around ten full-time-equivalent (FTE) employees at any given time of the

year.

In the introduction to this volume, the bcWorkshop in Dallas (and now

with a center in Houston) was introduced through a project called the

Light House. This Dallas-based center is somewhat of a hybrid of the

CDCP and the DCDC models. It is an independent center that engages

many of its projects through collaboration with the University of Texas at

Arlington. It is not financially, but instead pedagogically, supported by the

University.

Axis 2: Project-Based/Research

The activity of research is to “search closely” 7.8 —to search and re-search, again

and again. The Project/Research axis establishes the direction in which

projects will occur in the center. Will the design center participate in client-

based design projects such as buildings, master plans, and/or landscape

designs? Or will it conduct research on people, programs, and geographies?

Again, this does not suggest that there is no research in design projects.

Instead it is directed toward the underlying focus of the work—actual

projects designed and built within communities, or study [research] on those

communities. One cannot happen without the other. They are distinct, but

interrelated.

For example, since 2001, as part of our mission, the DCDC has worked

alongside community residents and artists to coordinate and perform

mercenary artistic/architectural installations within several burned houses

throughout the City of Detroit. This project is titled FireBreak: Architecture

and Community Agitation. FireBreak engenders the position that everyone—

the next-door neighbor, the person down the street—can shape their physical

world. The DCDC’s research through these catalytic interventions and

interferences has thrown the urban context—and one’s power over it—

into the public discourse, through both event and word. At face value, the

advantage that the DCDC has being in an academic environment is that it

has access to creative methods of research and project delivery, which are

potentially more limited in a traditionally professional context. FireBreak is

87The Activity of Activism

7.8 http://www.etymonline.com/

index.php?term=research (accessed

January 15, 2015).

The activity of

research is to “search

closely”—to search

and re-search, again

and again.

FireBreak engenders

the position that

everyone—the next-

door neighbor, the

person down the

street—can shape

their physical world.

both intensely research- and project-based. It asserts that design is also a

research activity, whether inside or outside of the academic environment.

Research is not about where the center is located, but how the center

engages the process of investigation. This type of praxis can be witnessed in

the “agit-prop work” of Miami University Center for Community

Engagement in Over-the-Rhine, discussed in detail in Tom Dutton’s essay in

this book.

Step 3b: Activity/Activism Matrix: What We Do. [Strategies]

Both activity and activism derive their definitions along the same trajectory,

which meant “drive, urge, chase, [and] stir up.” 7.9 The Activity/Activism

Matrix (Figure 4) engenders the idea that through the activities design

88The Activity of Activism

7.9 http://www.etymonline.com/

index.php?term=active (accessed

January 15, 2015); http://

www.etymonline.com/index.php?

term=act (accessed January 15, 2015).

50/50

Urban Design Urban Planning

Landscape

Arc

hit

ectu

re

50/50

Urban Design Urban Planning

Landscape

Arc

hit

ectu

re

Activity/Activism Matrix [Strategies]

Activity/Activism Matrix Matrix [with Design Center located]

Detroit Collaborative Design Center

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100% Architecture 0% Landscape

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% Architecture 100% Landscape

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100% Architecture 0% Landscape

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% Architecture 100% Landscape

Figure 4

Activity/Activism MatrixVisit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Please see the end of the chapter

for Diagrams filled in the the

Detroit Collaborative Design

Center (DCDC) Information.

centers engage, activism occurs (Figure 4). The axes of the Activity/Activism

Matrix are listed as Architecture and Landscape Architecture; and Urban

Design and Urban Planning. These particular labels are fluid and dynamic.

The types of projects that the center will engage may be different than the

ones listed. For example, following stakeholder input, a center may focus

more on object design like furniture and pavilions, or graphic design, and so

forth. Obviously, the labels can be altered and changed with other activities.

These four labels are suggested only for the purpose of example. The

particular labels chosen will also reveal whether a center is leaning toward

being primarily project-based or research-based.

Design centers engage and design in varied ways within their respective

communities. The axes for each of these centers may be labeled quite

differently than the four that are currently listed on the chart as place-

holders.

89The Activity of Activism

Step 3c: Determining the Mission: Why we do it.

The mission of a design center is specific to that center, and has a particular

agenda. The mission statement should be concise and precise—one or two

sentences. It should reflect work that the design center can have direct

influence in achieving. The mission statement must not be constructed and

construed at the outset, only to be laid to rest without further attention. It

needs to be reevaluated and discussed frequently.

90The Activity of Activism

How are they Engaged What is Provided

Who is Engaged Why are they Engaged

Commun

ity Pa

rticip

ation

Org

aniza

tiona

l Col

labor

atio

n

Nonprofits/Underserved Communities

Students

Professionals

Government Agencies

Build

Cap

acity

Urban R

evita

lizatio

n

Community Based Development

Innovative Design Solutions including

Ecological Design and Universal Design

Design Resource/Advocacy

Access to Professional Services

Determining the Mission

Minimum Importance

Maximum Importance

Figure 5

Determining the MissionVisit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Please see the end of the chapter

for Diagrams filled in the the

Detroit Collaborative Design

Center (DCDC) Information.

To help stabilize the shifting nature of a mission statement, three other brief

definitional elements are needed: a vision statement, strategies, and tactics.

The last two are often misused as meaning the same thing; the difference

between them will be discussed briefly below.

The vision statement is the center’s directed view of a future larger than

the center itself. The vision facilitates constructing the design center’s

mission within this larger future. Ultimately the question becomes: With the

help of the design center, what could be a possible future for the district,

city, region, and so forth?

Strategies are the means and methods used by the design center to

accomplish its defined mission. Examples include teaching through doing

projects, urban projects that relate to the mission, and urban research that

furthers issues relative to the mission.

Tactics are the specific actions taken by the center that are guided by the

strategies. They are the day-to-day tools or activities used to foster the

strategic objectives, which in turn center on the mission.

Let’s examine how the mission statement plays out at two different design

centers.

The DCDC mission statement is as follows: The Detroit

Collaborative Design Center acts as a catalyst for improving

the quality of life in Detroit for all people.

The bcWorkshop Mission Statement is as follows: The

bcWORKSHOP seeks to improve the livability and viability of

communities through the practice of thoughtful design and

building.

The items that surround the circular chart in Figure 5 are all important to

formulate the mission although several of them may receive a minimum

response from the center staff. This does not mean that they are

unimportant, but that they may not have prioritized attention. All the items

should be considered, even though some or many of them will not be

ultimately engaged. The diagram is divided into four sections that essentially

address Who, Why, How, and What. Finally, everything that the design

91The Activity of Activism

center lists on the chart may not be accommodated within the actual

mission statement. The mission statement should be the key prioritized

intention with the chart as the supporting information.

Who is Engaged?

The urban community, students, recent graduates, professionals, and

government agencies are examples of constituents that may be engaged by

the activities of the center. They are potentially the target focus of the

center’s work. Indexing these different engagers to provide a sense of

priority is directly contingent on the Why, How, and What categories.

Typically, design centers focus on the urban community. Their work is about

expanding the nature of practice to include communities often left out of

the process. If the center is in a university context, the student may also be

an important constituent to help provide leaders in urban revitalization.

Providing opportunities for recent graduates can help them connect with

projects that expand their professional experience and may influence how

they practice in the future.

Because many professionals have limited experience in working with

nonprofits and with a participatory method of design, this constituency

group can learn and expand the impact of the center, while in turn

expanding their own understanding and skillsets in practice. Government

agencies have often needed third-party advisory teams that do not have a

conflict of interest. Other constituencies may arise, depending on the

specific context of your design center.

Why are they Engaged?

What are the ultimate objectives of why the design center will do what it

does, and with whom? Beyond just “providing great design,” design and the

design process are tools to leverage and engender alternative possibilities

for urban communities. Design Centers can play a role in developing great

urban places for all people, providing input on urban design plans that

include all neighborhoods, and fostering socially and culturally responsive

projects.

92The Activity of Activism

Often communities or nonprofits have the desire and even the resources

for a project, but lack the capacity and knowledge to initiate and complete

it. Design centers can provide programs that help build capacity. A design

center’s ability to help revitalize the urban landscape in areas of

disinvestment can help define the city as an entity composed of all of its

parts, rather than as a city with “good” neighborhoods and not-so-good

ones. Finally, when considering how development will occur, design centers

might suggest community-based development. With this approach, existing

assets are acknowledged and celebrated with the local residents, as a key

part in the decision-making process.

How are they Engaged?

These criteria define the actual process of how the design center will

interact with its constituents. Figure 5 lists community participation and

organizational collaboration. There is a difference between a collaborative

design process—which includes many stakeholders at the table and carries

out its resolutions through an organizational collaboration—and a top-

down process that sets and carries out priorities through a hierarchy

imposed from above.

Conventional practice enacts a top-down approach, with a nonprofit board

setting the vision and mission for the organization, developing its master

plans, and choosing its projects, which then the staff actualizes for the

benefit of the community. A true activist approach establishes community

participation that includes all people from the beginning in determining the

vision of the future, making decisions, and directing the design activities.

What is Provided?

What are the core products used to achieve the issues identified in the

“why” category? These decisions begin to help focus or distinguish between

project-based outcomes and research-based outcomes. Design centers

must remember the most obvious and prosaic observation that “design is

the first word in their name,” and should reflect what they do as an entity.

That does not mean that they must always or only be designers or

designing projects. But design centers can be supporters of well-designed

93The Activity of Activism

and innovative solutions. They can provide design advocacy, and offer access

to professionals who deliver quality and thoughtful designed products. As

discussed in the Introduction to this book, well-designed space is a social

justice issue.

Step 3d Operational Structure

Part of defining how the center will operate in day-to-day activities, the

center’s operational structure needs to be designed. This includes structure

for the board of advisors, and a protocol for staff reporting. The DCDC’s

structure can serve as an example (Figures 6-11).

Historically, American universities have positioned themselves as separate

from the context in which they are immersed. Many universities have

attempted to alter this dynamic. It is paramount within the mission of the

University of Detroit-Mercy to engage with the urban context of Detroit.

However, this does not mean that the people of Detroit will be interested

in engaging with the University. Some neighborhood community

organizations were skeptical and suspicious of the true intentions of the

DCDC when we first approached them. They were weary of semester-

long projects where university students from around the world are, at

most, temporarily engaged. They were also weary of being the object of

investigations, research, and good intentions that did more to serve the

university’s needs and uphold its perspective than their own. It was essential

for the DCDC to make sure its work would be understood, and in fact to

operate in a way that could more truly meet the highest expectations of its

client neighborhoods in Detroit. Hence, the DCDC is structured as a year-

round operating center that works independently from the semester

structure. Projects exist without interruption from semester schedules or

academic years. A full-time staff and support was required for this structure

to be realized. Through project fees and philanthropic support, the DCDC

is independently funded as a self-sustaining component within the School

of Architecture. This does not mean that it is inappropriate for a design

center to use the semester system as a way to structure community

engagement. At the DCDC, we found that it was not appropriate for us,

given our context.

94The Activity of Activism

That is not to say that the DCDC hit the ground running, as a fully

professionalized and year-round practice. In fact, to help start the DCDC,

its founders initiated a Neighborhood Design Studio where students had

the opportunity to work with community groups from the Detroit

metropolitan area that were seeking to make a difference in their

neighborhoods. This studio evolved into the Detroit Collaborative Design

Center, with its full-time professional staff. The Design Center staff now

includes one executive director, one associate director, three research/

design fellows who act as project managers, three interns/recent graduates,

two full-time students and two or three part-time students. Since the

students change every semester, they are the one component that is tied

directly to the semester schedule. The Dean of the School of Architecture

is not considered part of the Center’s staff, although the executive director

reports directly to the Dean.

95The Activity of Activism

Figure 6

Administrative Reporting

Organizational Structure

The DCDC is currently considering restructuring its Board of Advisors into

three related but distinct boards—An Honorary Board, an Advisory Board,

and an Executive Board. The Honorary Board consists of people who exist

throughout the globe and are viewed as celebrated experts in, but not

limited to, community design, community organizing, and social justice in

design. This board would meet once a year and would be focused on

leadership and fundraising. The Advisory Board will consist of key

stakeholders and meet every four to six months. Its role will focus on

policy decisions. Finally the Executive Board, or working group, would be a

subset of the Advisory Board. This board would implement the Advisory

Board’s recommendations and will meet every two months.

96

Figure 7: Project Management Organizational Structure

DCDC

HonoraryBoard

AdvisoryBoard

ExecutiveBoard

AdvisoryBoard

Community Public Relations AIA Student Faculty

RealEstateFinanceFundingBankingLegalInterdisciplinaryDean

Policy Discussion2-3 Times / Year

Figure 8

HonoraryBoard

ExecutiveBoard

Dean of Architecture

Mercy Sister Jesuit Priest Academic Vice-President

Faculty

Working Group6 Times / Year

Leadership/Fundraising1 Times / Year

ExecutiveBoard

Working Group6 Times / Year

AdvisoryBoard

Policy Discussion2-3 Times / Year

HonoraryBoard

ExecutiveBoard

Dean of Architecture

Mercy Sister Jesuit Priest Academic Vice-President

Faculty

Working Group6 Times / Year

Leadership/Fundraising1 Times / Year

ExecutiveBoard

Working Group6 Times / Year

AdvisoryBoard

Policy Discussion2-3 Times / Year

Figure 9

Figure 10

HonoraryBoard

ExecutiveBoard

Dean of Architecture

Mercy Sister Jesuit Priest Academic Vice-President

Faculty

Working Group6 Times / Year

Leadership/Fundraising1 Times / Year

ExecutiveBoard

Working Group6 Times / Year

AdvisoryBoard

Policy Discussion2-3 Times / Year

Figure 11

The Activity of Activism

Step 3e: Operational Barometer: How we do it. [Tactics]

The Operational Barometer (Figure 12) establishes the day-to-day

structure of activities. In what way will the center operate? How will it

perform the day-to-day work? Each sliding scale has been marked with a

dot to represent the DCDC’s work. Following each scale is a brief

description on some of the issues behind how the dot’s location was

determined.

97

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

The Activity of Activism

Figure 12

Operational BarometerVisit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Please see the end of the chapter

for Diagrams filled in the the

Detroit Collaborative Design

Center (DCDC) Information.

Figure 13

Independent/Collaborative (Figure 13): DCDC has the skill and resources to

operate independently on most small to midsize projects. To enrich the

process and final product, however, we persistently seek out collaborative

possibilities similar to the one we pursued in New Orleans with Wayne

Troyer Architect. Our collaborators other than architects have included

artists, health care consultants, other activist groups, and economic

development consultants.

Figure 14

Participatory Process/Traditional Process (Figure 14): This scale is partially

influenced by whether the center is more project-based or more research-

based. The DCDC submits that one of the core aspects of a design center

working in a community is its use of participatory processes. People who

are more engaged with the process understand how the resulting

architecture relates directly to their needs, desires, and mission. But there

are times when a more traditional process may be appropriate.

Figure 15

Perform Services/Mediator Between Services (Figure 15): As illustrated earlier,

the DCDC primarily performs the services needed, while other design

centers have different approaches. The CDCP, for example, mediates

between the client and the designer. Both approaches are valid and

important. It is important to note that design centers have sometimes had

tenuous relationships with the architecture profession—they are

sometimes viewed as unfair competition. The DCDC has established

several mechanisms to help alleviate this friction:

98

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

The Activity of Activism

• We will not place ourselves in a competition or bid situation for any

project.

• We have an AIA member on our Board to advise on the projects we

accept and to keep us in touch with the perception of the

professional community.

• We primarily work on projects that otherwise would never reach the

desk of an architect.

• On almost all our projects, we partner with an architecture firm to

complete the work. Since we usually take projects that would

otherwise never make it to an architectural office, we have essentially

generated work for architects.

Figure 16

Design/Build (Figure 13): Only one of the projects that DCDC pursues in

each year is design/build. We pursue this when we feel our insertion into

the construction process will add a unique value and quality. Often we may

build a small portion of the design that would normally be eliminated

under traditional processes. For instance, The DCDC built approximately

20 percent of the overall for the St Joseph Rebuild Center, a homeless day

center in New Orleans designed collaboratively with the local firm, Wayne

Troyer Architect.

Figure 17

12 Month Full-Time/Semester-Based (Figure 16): Our projects occur on

their own time schedule and are not subject to a semester-based system.

So the Center is free from the limited semester-based time frame. But the

students we hire are not. This means that the professional staff has to train

new student interns every four months. This seemingly small issue has

consequences for the continuity of the process and the consistent quality

and accuracy of the work. Projects rarely fit within a semester timeline.

99

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

The Activity of Activism

Figure 18

Politically Active/Politically Inactive (Figure 19): One of the DCDC’s primary

objectives is to be an advisor to city officials and policy makers on the

impact and value of thoughtful design in the urban environment. At the

same time, our center posits that to be politically active is more than

speaking out on political issues and/or advising political dignitaries. FireBreak,

referenced earlier in this essay, is a politically active work.

Figure 19

Project Fees/Philanthropic Funding (Figure 18): Another way to label this

sliding scale could be mission-driven versus fee-driven. The DCDC is

funded through two primary sources: two-thirds from project fees; and

one-third from grants, donations, and foundation support. We struggle to

find the economic balance between these two sources. The more we need

to accept projects for the purpose of “paying the bills,” the more we

potentially drift and shift away from our core mission objectives. [Refer to

the section on “Validating the Center” for further thoughts on the gap

present between projects fees and philanthropic funding.]

Validating the Center

If the center is not an independent entity and is associated with another

organization like a university, it is important to establish concrete ways of

validating the center’s place within the organization’s core operations and

mission. This is because the financial stability of a design center is tenuous

and fleeting. One method is to develop a cost-benefit analysis that looks

beyond the traditional bottom line. A modified cost-benefit analysis gives

concrete numbers to the more intangible benefits and values that the

center brings the organization. Typically the expense and revenue budget

breakdown for the Detroit Collaborative Design Center is based on our

projects’ sources and uses. The gap between these sources and uses must

100

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50/5

0

The Activity of Activism

be filled by fundraising efforts, which often fall short. This gap only exists

because it is viewed through the lens of projects and their bottom lines.

We have begun to modify this by calculating the added value of, for

example, the DCDC’s contribution to the School of Architecture

curriculum; the unsolicited marketing and visibility brought to the university

through publications, exhibit invitations, and awards directly associated with

the Design Center ; the increase in student enrollment that has resulted

from the attractiveness of the DCDC; the support that the DCDC gives to

students and faculty of the university; and the support for School of

Architecture building repair that the DCDC performs without

compensation. If the Design Center were not present, these benefits would

not occur. It becomes clear the Design Center actually makes and saves

money for the University, after these numbers are added to the revenue

side of the equation.

Another place where validating the DCDC is critical is exactly the same

place the DCDC wants to do its work: the community. A design center

should never take it for granted that the community residents and

nonprofit organizations will view the center’s work as essential or even

beneficial to their needs and circumstances. The value of thoughtfully

designed space and form, whether a single building or a neighborhood plan,

is seen by many nonprofit organizations to be out of the reach of their

budget. Also, many of these organizations have the perception that if the

space for their offices, service centers, or other activities is well designed, it

will give the impression that they have allocated their financial resources to

the wrong endeavor—that they have mismanaged their money. Part of a

design center’s responsibility is to reveal to clients how a well-designed

space can enhance the mission of their organization and the quality of life

of its users; furthermore, a design center must be able to show that its

design support does not necessarily have to come at a high price.

To help guide nonprofits in this direction, a design center may consider

showing them other well-designed nonprofit spaces, and providing

opportunities for peer discussions among nonprofits and community users

that have worked with the design center, and those that are considering

whether to do so.

101The Activity of Activism

Mission directives guide nonprofits. Many nonprofit organizations view

space decisions not so much in terms of their mission, but as a pragmatic

matter related to their financial “bottom line.” They need to know how

their design decisions about space can be integral to their mission, and to

the success of their programs and activities. When an organization

witnesses how the architecture of a space can be not solely a bottom-line

issue but also a crucial consideration for the success of their mission, the

discourse turns to one of how to sync the architecture and urban design

with mission objectives and intentions.

Conclusion

Design centers and their processes are a work in progress. So for this

chapter to provide a definitive model or series of models of what a

successful design center might look like would limit this investigation.

Community design centers look and operate differently today then they

did 20 years ago. If they continue to grow and shift then they will look and

operate differently in the next 10 to 20 years. With this in mind, this essay

offers a process and a series of diagrams to assist in making the decisions

required for setting up a center. These diagrams and the process they

illuminate can also be revisited as a center develops, to reflect and evaluate

its impact and direction. As a center uses these diagrams, it can also

speculate beyond itself and help develop new directions for what a design

center in general can be in the future. This essay not only stands as a

document of what design centers are and what they have done; but also it

is a provocation of what they can become.

102The Activity of Activism

103

Organizational Matrixwith the DCDC Located

The Activity of Activism

Organizational Matrix

Professional Academic

Pro

jects

R

esearc

h

50/50

100%

Aca

dem

ic0%

Pro

fess

iona

l

100% Research 0% Projects

0% A

cade

mic

100%

Pro

fess

iona

l

0% Research 100% Projects

Detroit Collaborative Design Center

Organizational Matrix [with Design Center located]

Professional Academic

Pro

jects

R

esearc

h

50/50

100%

Aca

dem

ic0%

Pro

fess

iona

l

100% Research 0% Projects

0% A

cade

mic

100%

Pro

fess

iona

l

0% Research 100% Projects

Organizational Matrix

Visit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Continue Reading.

104

Activity/Activism Matrix

Visit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Continue Reading.

Activity/Activism Matrixwith the DCDC Located

The Activity of Activism

50/50

Urban Design Urban Planning

Landscape

Arc

hit

ectu

re

50/50

Urban Design Urban Planning

Landscape

Arc

hit

ectu

re

Activity/Activism Matrix [Strategies]

Activity/Activism Matrix Matrix [with Design Center located]

Detroit Collaborative Design Center

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100% Architecture 0% Landscape

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% Architecture 100% Landscape

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100% Architecture 0% Landscape

0% U

rban

Des

ign

100%

Urb

an P

lann

ing

0% Architecture 100% Landscape

105

Determining the Missionwith the DCDC Located

The Activity of Activism

Determining the Mission

Visit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Continue Reading.

How are they Engaged What is Provided

Who is Engaged Why are they Engaged

Commun

ity Pa

rticip

ation

Org

aniza

tiona

l Col

labor

atio

n

Nonprofits/Underserved Communities

Students

Professionals

Government Agencies

Build

Cap

acity

Urban R

evita

lizatio

n

Community Based Development

Innovative Design Solutions including

Ecological Design and Universal Design

Design Resource/Advocacy

Access to Professional Services

Determining the Mission [with Design Center located]

Minimum Importance

Maximum Importance

106

Operational Barometerwith the DCDC Located

The Activity of Activism

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50

/50

Operational Barometer [with Design Center located]

Operational Barometer [Tactics]

Design Technical Assistence

Independent Collaborative

Participatory Process Traditional Process

Perform Services Mediator for Services

Design Build

Professional Staff Student Projects

12 Month Full Time Semester Based

Politically Active Politically Inactive

Project Fees Philanthropic Funding

50

/50

Operational Barometer

Visit the DCDC website for

usable downloadable diagrams.

Continue Reading.

Frank Russell

[Insert Practitioner Here] Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

Actions

A08

While the medical and legal professions benefit respectively from both a

foundational ethical claim (i.e., the Hippocratic oath in medicine) and an

infrastructure to implement that claim (i.e., public defenders in the legal

profession), the architectural profession has neither, apart from a broad

mention in the American Institute of Architects bylaws.8.1 This is despite the

centrality of architecture to life, safety, economic, and social systems at the

global level. Individual practitioners have often attempted to square

themselves against this deficit by seeking to contribute volunteer time,

typically on an ad-hoc basis, as time and desire allowed. This essay argues

that a formalized, ongoing volunteer effort can pay off for both the community

and the profession through alternative community design center models.

[Insert Practitioners Here]

Four such organizations have been recognized as models for this type of

structure:

• Community Design Collaborative of Philadelphia (CDC)

• Minnesota Design Team (MDT)

• Community Design Center of Pittsburgh

(CDCP, called the Pittsburgh Architect’s Workshop until 1987)

• Neighborhood Design Center in Baltimore-Maryland (NDC)

The NDC and CDCP were established in 1968 as unaffiliated grassroots

confederations of architects. Central to their efforts was an initial

perspective that the practice of architecture suffered from the “institutional

failure of the design profession to deal with the issues of race and

108

[Insert Practitioner Here] Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

Frank Russell

8.1 The Institute Bylaws state two

ethical objectives among others: “to

insure the advancement of the living

standards of people through their

improved environment; and to make the

profession of ever-increasing service to

society.” The 2012 Code of Ethics and

Professional Conduct defines broad legal

and business ethics for practicing

architects. (Sources: Institute Bylaws,

revised June 2014, at http://www.aia.org/

aiaucmp/groups/aia_members_only/

documents/pdf/aiab080715.pdf,

(Accessed March 25, 2015)and Code of

Ethics and Professional Conduct, 2012,

http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/

documents/pdf/aiap074122.pdf.

(Accessed March 25, 2015)

poverty.”8.2 Their intent was to modify the very structure of service

delivery, shifting it from a vertical process of professional expertise

delivered to the client, to a horizontal, collaborative process that engages

the professional and the client (a community group, for example, or a

neighborhood) as mutual stakeholders for social justice.

The MDT and the CDC were established much later, in 1983 and 1991

respectively, in a different context of pragmatism and entrepreneurialism.8.3

Not short on idealism, both the MDC and CDC aspired to “envision

alternative preferred futures” as well as recreate lost “Civitas.”8.4 Both

groups are tied closely to established hierarchical structures, embedded in

the local AIA chapters for technical and financial support. Today, all four of

these organizations have refined their missions to reflect less unbridled

idealism and more understated pragmatism to provide design assistance

and promote education about best design practices in their respective

communities. Each CDC represents a type pf volunteer model listed below.

They are, in no order of preference:

Volunteer design service—Individual

This is the core activity of the volunteer model. In this activity, the design

center acts as a broker between individual designers and nonprofits,

homeowners and businesses. For example, CDCP administers the Design

Consults program (formerly RenPlan®), which pairs property owners with

volunteer architects for independent on-site design consultations. CDC

sponsors rStore which brings together designers and small storefront

business owners. However, other programs, such as Public Architecture

Inc.’s 1% Solution have perfected this clearinghouse concept.8.5

Volunteer design service—Group

A group of volunteer professionals organized by the CDC to address a

specific design problem. For example, the MDT facilitates small town

charrettes and CDC sponsors “Infill Philadelphia,” a five-year program

“exploring innovative design strategies for infill urban development.”

109[Insert Practitioner Here]: Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

8.2 Rex Curry, “The History of

Community Design,” The ACSA

Sourcebook of Community Design

Programs at Schools of Architecture in

North America (Washington: ACSA

Press, 2000): 51. Curry describes a

shift in emphasis in strategy from the

idealism of the 1960s, which was

inspired by a cultural movement and

supported by the Great Society

programs, to pragmatic

entrepreneurialism of the 1980s,

necessary within the context of

fiscally conservative public policy.

8.3 Curry, “The History of

Community Design,” 52.

8.4 W. Arthur Mehrhoff, “A Process

of Place-Making Stimulates a State’s

Communities,” Small Town (Sept.–Oct.

1995): 2,6.

8.5 Public Architecture Inc.’s 1%

Solution, http://

www.publicarchitecture.org/the_1/.

(Accessed December 15, 2014)

This is a clearinghouse operation that

connects qualified nonprofits in need

of design service to design firms

interested in donating pro bono

services. In two years the program

facilitated the delivery of $10 million

in services from 200 design firms.

Design service grants:

CDCP extends its reach by raising funds to provide small grants to

nonprofits that then hire independent design firms. CDCP staff remains

involved throughout the design process to advise the recipient and ensure

community engagement with the project.

Community education and design advocacy

Most of these design centers host events and programs aimed at exploring

design issues, often according to theme, such as NDC’s GreeNDC

program. CDC sponsors an Excellence in Design award. CDCP organizes

“Pedal Pittsburgh.”

Staffing varies at each of these organizations. NDC, CDC, and CDCP all

have in-house professional design staff who administer programs or raise

funding for them, but all Centers rely on volunteers to provide design

service.8.6 MDT boasts one part-time staff member, an architect, from the

local AIA Chapter. For each organization, volunteers provide the bulk of the

work, and the design service progresses only to schematic design, hence its

limitation.

Limitations

As mentioned in the Stephen Vogel’s essay in this volume, “The

Foundations of Community Design Centers,” the volunteer model is

intended to pump-prime a construction effort. It enables a minimum level

of service to move the proposal forward to the stages of feasibility

assessment, fund raising, and design development. In stopping short at low-

or no-cost conceptual/schematic design, the volunteer model is structured

to benefit the provider almost as much as the recipient of services. These

projects, if eventually funded, later feed the private sector full-fee work that

might not otherwise exist. Consequently, the volunteer design centers avoid

unfair competition issues which full-service design centers often face, while

at the same time educating the public and future clients about the value of

design.8.7 These models work to both meet the perceived obligation of

design professionals to “give back” to the community and provide significant

advantages to the profession. Benefits to individual volunteer architects may

110[Insert Practitioner Here]: Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

8.6 Techniques for funding operating

costs vary but may include a fee

associated with coordinating the

volunteer service (NDC).

8.7 CDCP asserts that its programs

have supported an economic stimulus

of $90 million in capital investments

resulting from contracts arranged

through its Design Fund Grant

Program.

A formalized, ongoing

volunteer effort can

pay off for both the

community and the

profession....

....volunteer efforts

may be plagued by

poor quality control, as

contributors and

managers frequently

turn over.

include future work from service recipients.8.8 In total, volunteers not only

accomplish significantly more work than a limited staff would,8.9 but they

also constitute an army of advocates for the mission of the design center, its

education programs, and the appreciation of professional design services.8.10

In addition, if adequately funded, volunteer providers can engage in deeper

explorations into problems that for-profit firms cannot provide for

economic or political reasons.

There are also drawbacks to limited-service and volunteer models, which

may shortchange recipient organizations or even undermine public

confidence in the value of design assistance. Simply connecting

organizations with volunteer designers carries with it no client education or

design advocacy. Without education, recipient organizations may subject the

design to uninformed changes that may undermine the original project

intent. Volunteer efforts may be plagued by poor quality control, as contributors

and managers frequently turn over. Also, adequate funding is needed to

support continuity and effective management of between 300 and 500

annual volunteers, which can become extremely challenging. Finally, limited

in-house professional capacity may be necessary to cover commitments

not carried out by promised volunteer efforts.

Summary

To close, the volunteer model may offer a messianic support base from

which to educate the public and to empower communities. Both design

service recipient and design volunteer act as patron and provider of

invaluable design advocacy and education, thus raising expectations for all

parties about a community’s entitlement to more successfully designed

places.

111[Insert Practitioner Here]: Volunteer Models of Community Design Centers

8.8 Mehrhoff, 5.

8.9 As a measure of volume and

impact, consider that the NDC

reports engaging 500 volunteers who

provided 28,000 hours valued at $1

million. These efforts helped recipient

organizations raise over $8 million for

further design and implementation

(Cameron email 11/3/08).

8.10 Mehrhoff, 9.

Charles C. Bohl

David Brain

Andrea Gollin

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

Actions

A09

Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Toolfor Both Students and Professionals

At the University of Miami, the tradition of studio-based involvement in the

community by students and faculty of the School of Architecture has been

realized in the form of two distinct but complementary programs: the

Center for Urban and Community Design (CUCD), formed in 1992; and

the Community Building Program (CBP, formerly the Knight Program in

Community Building), founded in 2000 with a grant from the John S. and

James L. Knight Foundation. The CUCD generally has been oriented to the

goal of helping shape the healthy growth of the region, whereas the CBP is

a national mid-career fellowship program that has advanced the knowledge

and practice of effective, collaborative community building among diverse

design and community-building professions. Both programs reflect

principles and practices of civic art and New Urbanism that have been at

the core of the School’s academic mission. The School has made an explicit

commitment to the principles outlined in the Charter of the New

Urbanism, emphasizing an understanding of design as an integrated (and

integrative) practice that requires an ability to move skillfully and

thoughtfully from the scale of the building to the scale of the region, and

that engages issues beyond architectural form in a comprehensive,

reflective, and pragmatic fashion.9.1 The principles of the School also

emphasize environmental responsibility and the challenges of sustainability

in terms of the valuable cultural and built legacies of real communities. The

CBP has built on the School’s commitment to community building by extending

its reach to the national level. In creating a program for mid-career

professionals, the educational goal was conceived as a collaboration in

which the Fellows would learn the principles and practices of livable

community design and community building from the School’s faculty,

experts in the field, and each other, while the School’s students and faculty

would benefit from interactions with leaders in community-building fields.

113

9.1 “Charter for the New Urbanism,”

Congress for New Urbanism, 2001.

http://www.cnu.org/charter.

(Accessed December 15, 2014)

Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Toolfor Both Students and Professionals

Charles C. Bohl, David Brain, Andrea Gollin & Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk

Center for Urban and Community Design (CUCD)

The formation of the CUCD in 1992 emerged directly from the daunting

task of mustering resources for rebuilding South Florida in the aftermath of

Hurricane Andrew. Since then, the CUCD’s multi-faceted regional

outreach has included zoning studies for Miami Beach, a master plan for

West Coconut Grove and vision plans for multiple South Florida

neighborhoods. The work in Miami’s West Coconut Grove best exemplifies

the success of this approach. The West Grove is a neighborhood with a

physical fabric, a population, and a cultural heritage that still reflect

Bahamian settlement in the area during the late 19th century. It is also a

community that faces the economic hardships and social ills associated

with pervasive poverty. Although the neighborhood has been relatively

resistant to gentrification as a result of significant homeownership rates,

ethnic character, poverty, and problems related to high crime rates, its

future has long been in question. Between 1999 and 2003, the CUCD

applied for and received funds from U.S. Department of Housing and

Urban Development and the City of Miami to document the built legacy

of the historic neighborhoods of Coconut Grove and to explore the

potential for sustainable growth and long-term preservation. This unique

opportunity for students to engage in detailed study of vernacular

architecture as part of the living tradition of a neighborhood established

trust between the university and a community that might ordinarily regard

such outside intervention with suspicion. The CUCD’s work in the West

Grove was multidisciplinary and involved the University’s Center for Family

Studies (social and behavioral sciences); Institute for Public History

(history); Center for the Advancement of Modern Media

(communications); Department of Art and Art History; and the Center for

Ethics and Public Service (community legal services). Almost 300 university

students and more than 40 faculty from different disciplines documented,

recognized, and celebrated the people, cultural life, and architectural

heritage of the West Grove through oral histories, photographs, a

documentary film, creation of maps, and drawings of the neighborhood’s

architecture. Projects have included designing and building affordable

houses on infill sites, facilitating neighborhood planning, providing legal

114Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool

assistance for neighborhood residents, and creating a Community Resource

Center that coordinates ongoing improvement efforts. The CUCD

established a Design/Build studio in 1999, giving students the opportunity

to participate in everything from design to permitting and construction for

affordable housing in West Coconut Grove.

The Community Building Program (Formerly the Knight Program in Community Building)

The CBP was established to advance the knowledge and practice of

effective, collaborative community building through interdisciplinary

initiatives, including charrettes, graduate assistantships, fellowships for mid-

career professionals, symposia, workshops, executive education courses,

publications, and study tours. The program was designed to help break down

the barriers that have divided the design and urban policy fields and their

related professional practices into many separate and often conflicting

disciplines; and to foster a holistic, integrative, collaborative approach to

place-making and community building. From 2000 to 2006, the program

awarded fellowships each year to twelve mid-career community

development professionals from a wide range of fields. Fellows came from

community-based nonprofits (e.g., housing, community development, the

arts); journalism; real estate development; and city government; as well as

planning, engineering, landscape architecture, and architecture. The Fellows

convened six times a year for workshops focused at the intersection of

community building and place making. The culmination of the Fellowship

year was an annual charrette. The CBP charrette brought the School of

Architecture faculty, graduate students from the School’s post-professional

urban design program, and Fellows to a community-seeking planning and

design assistance. The charrette cities were chosen through a competitive

process, on the basis of applications reviewed by the fellows themselves.

Part of their educational experience was selecting a community that was

judged to be “charrette ready”—places where there was a timely

opportunity to make a difference and which might not otherwise have

obtained the type of design expertise provided by the program. The CBP

provided intensive training through the National Charrette Institute; fellows

115Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool

The program was

designed to help break

down the barriers that

have divided the design

and urban policy fields

and their related

professional practices.

participated in organizing, facilitating, and documenting the stakeholder

meetings. Fellows, faculty members, consultants, and students collaborated

to produce a master plan, detailed urban design plans, and architecture

proposals. The fellows formulated recommendations in policy and

management areas, linking questions of physical form with concerns for

social equity, economic viability, environmental sustainability, and cultural

heritage. The themes of the charrettes were as diverse as the communities in

which they took place, including downtown and neighborhood revitalization,

historic preservation, affordable housing, infill and redevelopment, and

repairing and retrofitting suburban patterns.

Education and Publication

As part of their expansion of both professional and academic practice,

both programs have coupled community outreach with programs of

lectures, symposia, and publications that have extended the impact of their

work. CUCD has translated key urban design texts into Spanish and held a

symposium on the evolution of Havana’s urban form and green building.

The CPB has organized a wide variety of events and initiatives in the

United States and as well as abroad, including an annual symposium,

conferences, and exhibitions with the Council for European Urbanism

(CEU) and workshops to support the establishment of a design

development center to assist in the rebuilding of the Mississippi Gulf Coast

in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Knight Fellows, faculty members, and

students have collaborated on publications and research, often based on

the individual fellowship research projects, including book projects such as

The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook by Thomas Borrup.

Lessons for a Successful Design Center

One of the striking things about the CUCD is that it has had little

dedicated funding. It emerged as an organizational identity for the ongoing

involvement of faculty in the surrounding community rather than as a

resource-dependent form of institutional support for faculty projects. The

spirit of volunteerism, rooted in principles that have produced a consistent

116Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool

The themes of the

charrettes were as

diverse as the

communities in which

they took place.

orientation toward outreach in teaching and research, has carried the

CUCD from its inception. Faculty, students, and other consultants involved

in projects have been paid modestly out of the fees associated with

particular projects. One key advantage of this arrangement is that there has

been a strong sense of ownership by the faculty, which has used the CUCD

as a conduit for community involvement, not only as a source of studio

projects, but also a source of opportunities for connections in the

community necessary to build a professional practice. The downside of

relying on faculty volunteerism is that the work of the CUCD has tended

to wax and wane somewhat with the interest of particular faculty over

time.

Although initially funded by a grant, the CBP was also accomplished with

relatively little institutional overhead. The original grant provided for the

Fellowship program, an annual charrette, the director’s salary, one

administrative staff person, a part-time publications manager, and some

publications support. The grant funding was supplemented through

partnerships organized for particular projects and events and some

additional fellowship sponsorships. The School’s reputation and connection

to an international network of multidisciplinary practitioners also allowed it

to leverage the resources of the program with outstanding speakers,

community building experts and supplemental charrette team members

(consultants) who participated at little or no cost.

Conclusion

University-based centers, institutes, and design studios often take up

community problems in a way that reflects the narrower perspectives,

training, and expertise of the professionals rather than as a reflection of the

community’s own understanding of its issues. Between the two programs,

the School of Architecture situates design in a comprehensive approach to

community outreach that extends from the very local to the national, and

ultimately to the global. As Pitera points out in his introduction, the most

profound contributions of design centers involve moving beyond a

conventional “service” model to a model of community-based activism that

simultaneously solves complex problems and contributes to community as

well as academic understanding. The direct civic engagement and dialogue

117Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool

inherent in this model are not without risk—in fact, the model purposefully

embraces community conflicts—and design skills must be supplemented

with very specific training about the public process, facilitating community

dialogue, managing conflicts, and negotiating solutions and compromises. In

many respects, the charrette method is aligned with recent thinking about

community-based approaches and with the idea of research and civic

engagement that involves communities as equal partners rather than simply

as subjects or clients. Yet, post-charrette implementation represents a

critical challenge for all design centers and often gets overlooked as either

beyond the scope of the charrette or beyond the capacity of a design

center. The limitations of design center staff and resources require a balance

to be struck between providing direct design assistance to new client

communities and the ongoing demands for post-charrette implementation

assistance in support of past charrettes. Part of the solution is to secure

more resources and staff for centers dedicated to implementation and

ongoing assistance. Another is to build local and regional capacity to

support implementation by training more design practitioners and

community-building partners. Some of the capacity-building strategies might

include the creation of stewardship committees consisting of community

leaders, stakeholders and citizen representatives who continuously

prioritize, track, and renew local community design plans and strategies; the

training of community staff and design professionals in dynamic planning

processes (e.g., visioning, charrettes, neighborhood model block

workshops), form-based coding, and LEED; the creation of a public officials’

design institute modeled on the Mayor’s Institute on City Design;

establishing a partnership network of professional design and development

firms capable of refining and implementing plans and recommendations;

working with partners such as the AIA and higher education institutions to

help establish local and regional design centers; and providing training and

advocating for the establishment of city architects and professional urban

design staff positions. These are initiatives that can be replicated nationally

and internationally to build local community design capacity, sustain design

center initiatives and advance post-charrette implementation of plans and

recommendations.

118Community Outreach as a Pedagogical Tool

Kathleen Dorgan

Actions

A10

The Community Design Movement’sEarly Relationship with the AIA

The Birth of Professional Awareness

The AIA’s most successful public interest engagements followed Urban

League Executive Director Whitney Young’s bleak assessment of the

contributions of the profession to social justice, in his keynote speech at the

100th Convention of the American Institute of Architects in 1968

(reprinted in the Appendix of this book). The AIA responded to this

unvarnished challenge by reaching out to partner with existing architectural

advocacy groups, forming the Task Force on Equal Opportunity, chaired by

David Yerkes. Consciously composed of five White and five Black architects,

during the single year of the group’s existence it claimed two major

accomplishments;

1. Nurturing the formation of the AIA/Ford Foundation On-the-Job Training

(OJT) and scholarship program that supported students of color entering

the profession; and

2. Publication of “Guideline: Community Design Centers,” a handbook for

local AIA Chapters to employ in endorsing and supporting local

community design centers (CDCs).10.2

The term “community design center” was borrowed from the Community

Design Center in San Francisco, one of a growing group of independent

nonprofit design practices that were already working directly for distressed

communities to create resident-driven development plans, programs, and

projects. Although there were and continue to be many different models

for this type of engagement, the early CDCs shared a commitment to

community control of local decision-making and practicing design in a

manner that responds to the needs and preferences of low-income

residents.10.3 For a history of CDCs in general—many of which were

located in distressed urban areas and founded by African American

120

10.1 The author wishes to thank Chuck

Turner, who inspired and guided this

research; Connie Chung and Craig

Wilkins for helpful comments and

suggestions; and Nancy Hadley, AIA

Archivist, for her expert research

assistance.

The Community Design Movement’sEarly Relationship with the AIA

Kathleen Dorgan10.1

10.2 Kathleen Dorgan, “The Seventh

Generation:Is the AIA a Place for

Design that Matters?” In Progressive

Planning, No. 193, Fall 2012, 10. At

http://www.plannersnetwork.org/wp-

content/uploads/2013/02/

PPMag_F12_Dorgan.pdf.

(Accessed March 12, 2015)

10.3 Kathleen Dorgan, “Diversity in

Practice,” Progressive Planning (Winter

2006). At http://

www.plannersnetwork.org/2006/01/

diversity-in-practice/.

(Accessed March 12, 2015)

Embedded in

community design is a

commitment to

working in partnership

with communities to

implement systemic

change.

architects and students—please refer Chapter 3, “Defining/Redefining

Community Design: A History of Community Design Centers,” by Sheri

Blake.10.4

Embedded in community design is a commitment to working in partnership

with communities to implement systemic change. Thus community design is

an integral part of social, environmental, and economic development. As

described by Mary Camario,

physical decisions are political decisions about who gets what,

when, where, why, and how…community design is guided by

two principles of empowerment, one political, the other

enabling. The first recognizes the rights of all citizens to have

a voice in future decisions that affect the places they inhabit,

work, and linger in. Further it recognizes the professional's

responsibility not to be neutral in the face of exploitation of

people or the destruction of the environment.10.5

Further, successful community design requires engagement over a long

period of time, as well as a commitment by community design

professionals to develop the specific skills and knowledge necessary to

address the needs and dreams of under-resourced communities. Thus, as

can be expected, AIA support for the community design movement did not

come without conflict.

At the AIA convention held in June of 1969 in Chicago, despite support

from many in attendance, there were many objections to community

design practice. For example, some of the members who clearly

misunderstood the Institute’s prohibition on free sketches as a marketing

tool (since found to be a restraint of trade), argued that offering free

professional services to communities, which was the sole model for

community design practice at that juncture, was unethical. However, a

rousing speech by architecture student and AIAS president Taylor Culver

galvanized the assembly, which passed a resolution pledging a very

ambitious $15 million to alleviate urban blight.

The Task Force on Professional Responsibility to Society was formed to

implement the resolution. Robert Nash served as the chair and Grady

121The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

10.4 Donald I. King, FAIA offers his

personal perspective. As one of the young

professionals that participated in the OJT

scholarship and worked in community

design centers for eleven years of his

early career, working at the Urban Design

& Development Group in Detroit, the

Watts Urban Workshop, the Urban

Collaborative in Detroit, and

Environmental Works Community Design

Center in Seattle. King had an opportunity

to observe the difference in the quality of

professional services and community

responsiveness among centers. Although

proud of his accomplishments as a

community designer, he found himself

increasingly resentful of the limits to the

forms of practice open to Black architects.

In 1985 he founded his own firm, where

he felt more freedom to pursue his design

interests. Recently, he has developed a

renewed appreciation of the design

center experience and taken time to

reflect on the ways he could apply his

accumulated skills to neighborhood

advocacy: “There is a need to open a

national conversation about the ways in

which community design centers and

private practices can work together,” he

says. (Interview with the author July 8,

2008).

10.5 Mary C. Comerio, “Community

Design: idealism and entrepreneurship,”

Journal of Architecture and Planning

Research. Vol 1 (1984): 227-243.

AIA support for the

community design

movement did not

come without conflict.

Poluard was designated as the AIA staff administrator. Hugh Zimmer took a

leave from the community design center, Philadelphia Workshop, to work

for the initiative. Moving ahead quickly, the Task Force also identified the

need to organize action teams for “seeking out methods of actually

changing many of the building restraints that affect the poor,” established

partnerships with committees at 76 local chapters, and sponsored what

turned out to be a “fairly volatile” national conference at Howard

University in March 1970.10.6 This event brought CDCs together with

private practitioners and government officials. At this first national meeting

of CDCs, the differences in approach among the groups as well as the

profession—and tensions therein—were openly discussed. For example,

Willie Vasquez, director of The Real Great Society CDC in East Harlem,

charged that “[w]e’re wasting our time; we should be overthrowing the

system,” while architect and Episcopal priest Taylor Potter charged, “It’s

pathetic; these people don’t know that to win power in this country you’ve

got to convince the moderates. Your message has to be reasonable.” An

advisory committee representing thirteen centers was formed to continue

the dialogue; yet despite measurable progress, the Task Force concluded

that “[the] Institute somehow is still living with an inordinate amount of self-

serving programs to create public image and programs which in terms of

society’s needs are archaic.”10.7

The exchanges at the 1970 AIA convention only confirmed the ongoing conflict

between the Task Force and the AIA leadership, as well as racial tension and

substantial confusion between traditional charitable projects and advocacy for

systemic change. George T. Rockrise revealed that, “It sounds really negative

to me to say this, because I’m part of the Task Force, I feel I can say…I do

know the AIA is not fully behind it. I’m sure we are more aggravating to the

leadership than helpful.” Sanford Goldman of the Architects’ Center of

Florida suggested, “individual efforts would be more effective than getting

bogged down with…administrative fundraisers, putting out pamphlets on

what we are doing and what we want to do.” Harlem community design

practitioner Art Simms countered, “I don’t think very many architects

around the country would really want to deal with political problems that

poor communities black, white or Mexican or Puerto Rican whatever, have

to deal with. So it’s a clear point for CD [Community Design].” Another

participant, identified only as Alex B. from San Francisco, added

122

10.6 AIA, “Proceeding, 1970

Convention” (Washington, D.C.: The

American Institute of Architects, June

22-25, 1970, Boston, Massachusetts), 32.

10.7 All quoted material in this

paragraph is from “AIA Proceeding,

1970 Convention.” Many are also cited

in Dorgan, “Seventh Generation.”

The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

...and for white architects to come down to local

communities, whether Chinese, black or any other color and

say I know the city counselor and I can get you through the

zoning changes for this little project, is paternalism, it’s white

paternalism and the missionary attitude that low income

communities don’t want and reject it. It’s about time the

white society starts to learn to work with the minority

community, work with them and not do things for them. We

get sick and tired of you people doing things for us…the fact

that CDC gave away free architectural services still appalls

some members of the profession, whether or not they realize

the clients cannot afford a penny.

There was even the plaintive plea from an unidentified speaker from

Florida, “I don’t know how to start integrating with the blacks. Can

someone help me?”10.8

As mentioned by Sheri Blake in her essay in this volume, AIA assistance to

individual design centers began in July 1970 when Vernon Williams was

hired as the AIA Community Design Director.10.9 He and his staff, who

included a future president of the AIA, Marshall Purnell, began producing

newsletters and bulletins, as well as providing technical assistance to CDCs

and encouraging critical dialogue within the practice. When several months

later the Human Resource Council, headed by Robert Nash and Nathaniel

Owings, was established by the AIA to continue implementation of the

1969 resolution, the AIA’s administrative structure for the program was

again realigned. At that time, the ten large architecture firms represented

on the Council’s Executive Committee stepped up to contribute $10,000

dollars each. These funds, along with substantial support from membership

fees, allowed the AIA to pay staff and administrative expenses. None of the

funding went directly to community design centers.

Under Williams’ tutelage, the number of design centers expanded and the

network of practitioners strengthened. The next year, the AIA’s CDC Listing

– Community Design/Development Centers included 74 organizations. Yet,

after the initial $100,000 success and a contribution of $500,000 by the

123

10.8 Ibid.

10.9 Currently principal of Vernon

Williams Architects, PC, Chicago, IL.

The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

Ford Foundation, private national fundraising efforts stalled. Still, CDCs

were actively developing local resources and the federal Office of

Economic Opportunity (OEO) began to fund a few centers. In order to

expand funding, Williams initiated a campaign to secure federal dollars.

Legislation to do so was attached to a Child Care bill, which was passed by

Congress. A devastating veto by Richard Nixon, unrelated to the

community design provisions, effectively ended the quest to fulfill the AIA’s

$15 million dollar commitment, and began the devolution of the AIA/

Design Center partnership. This groundwork did lead to several grants by

HUD to community design centers, however, during Geno Baroni’s stint as

Assistant Secretary of HUD during the Carter administration.

Beset by recession, declining revenues and their own programmatic

priorities, new AIA leadership withdrew dedicated staff support for

community design. Shared staff continued to serve as the advisory

committee morphed into the Community Design Directors Association

(CDCDA), later renamed the Association of Community Design (ACD). As

annual gatherings of community designers migrated from the AIA

headquarters to community locations, AIA staff support effectively ended

by the early 1980s, with community design center concerns coming under

the purview of the AIA’s Urban Planning and Design Committee.

Learning to walk

Following the loss of staff support from the AIA, the Association for

Community Design continued as a voluntary association whose activities

were, until recently, generally limited to holding an annual conference at

which members exchange information about projects and debate proper

community design practices and epistemology. There were also a few

special projects, such as support for adopting technology through a

computer gift program and a shared nonprofit network. Until the beginning

of the millennium, Rex Curry and the Pratt Institute Center for Community

Economic Development (PICCED) provided a quarter-century of in-kind

administrative support to ACD, including planning the annual conference

and providing assistance to community design center start-ups and

community design researchers. Under PICCED leadership, ACD expanded

its affiliation with planners and landscape architects.

124The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

Because each community design center has a local constituency, most of

the members’ time and attention is focused on local initiatives and issues.

Without a national staff, there is little possibility of follow-up on members’

desire to share resources, forge partnerships, encourage the growth of the

movement, build diversity, or have an impact on national policy. The simple

opportunity to meet annually is important in shaping the career of many

practitioners, but it alone is not enough. The weakening of ties to the AIA was

detrimental to both organizations. Lacking a national intermediary, community

design has failed to approach its potential in scale or quality due in part to the

isolation of the practices; in turn, the AIA has failed so far to reach its early

promise as an agent of positive change. Anthony Costello’s essay in this book

will examine more recent efforts by the AIA to make that promise a reality.

Final thoughts

Chuck Turner, executive director of the Community Design Center in San

Francisco, sums up CDC-San Francisco’s engagement with the AIA from

the beginning to the present as follows:

The AIA played an important role in the support and

acceptance of CDC by the profession and government; it was

particularly helpful in helping the CDC organize and maintain

a network during the early years. In turn, CDCs gave the AIA

and profession an active presence in low-income communities

and in some ways changed the way the profession acted and

was perceived by the public and government. But since the

CDCs were not creatures of the AIA; they existed before and

in spite of AIA recognition, were not in most cases supported

or funded by AIA, and did not depend on AIA for survival,

there was always an ambivalence about the relationship. Who

could take credit, control and responsibility for the CDCs’

contribution and existence?10.10

As technology began to allow more collaboration across distance,

leadership within ACD has expanded. The individuals and organizations

involved are too numerous to list but a few exemplary initiatives are Anne-

Marie Lubenau and Alex Salazar’s leadership in professionalizing the annual

125

10.10 Personal correspondence, May 10,

2008

The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

Organizations lacking a

national intermediary,

community design has

failed to approach its

potential in scale or

quality due in part to

the isolation of the

practices; in turn, the

AIA has failed so far to

reach its early promise

as an agent of positive

change.

conference; Michael Rios’ work on defining the organization’s mission and

principles; Connie Chung’s success in creating an inclusive collaborative

environment; Jody Beck’s founding and editing of an online newsletter ; Sue

Thering and Cheryl Doble’s investigation of pedagogy; and Scott Ball, Jess

Zimbabwe, and Seth Hendler’s development of partnerships. As Katie

Swenson discusses in her essay, the Frederick P. Rose Architectural

Fellowship of Enterprise Community Partners is nurturing a new

generation of leaders who have become an important component of the

ACD leadership. Structures for Inclusion, Planners Network, and Architects/

Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADSPR) (whose current

president, Raphael Sperry, is a contributor to this book), all include

community designers as members, and have co-scheduled conferences

with ACD in order to increase exchange.

After a long silence, there seems to be a revival of interest in community design

at the AIA and within the profession at large, as well as the principles that

inform the practice. In the fall of 2008, ACD and the AIA Housing and

Custom Residential Knowledge Community collaborated on the

symposium “Innovations and Collaborations in Affordable Housing.” The

AIA’s Communities by Design programs encourage collaboration with

CDCs, and AIA publications (such as the Design Assistance Team Program

Guidelines for Disaster Response and Recovery Programs) recommend the

establishment of community design centers.10.11 The Boston Society of

Architects (BSA) made a five-year commitment to supporting its new

Community Design Resource Center (CDRC), which has attracted more

than 300 skilled professional volunteers. The U.S. Department of Housing

and Urban Development experimented with engaging architectural and

planning schools in rebuilding communities through the COPC Futures

Demonstration Grant Program, along with the Universities Rebuilding

America Program Community Design (URAPCD) program, in response to

the Gulf Coast devastation.10.12 It is yet to be determined if the interest

represented in these examples translates to the availability additional

resources for community design at a national level, either from the AIA or

from other professional organizations’ policy initiatives. Similarly, it remains

to be seen whether these examples have led to a corresponding

recognition of the role of community design practice in enhancing quality of

life and achieving justice.

126

10.12 Kathleen Dorgan, Michael Monti,

and Kinnard Wright (eds), “Design and

Disaster : Higher Education Responds to

Hurricane Katrina,” Cityscapes 10:3

(2009).

10.11 AIA Disaster Assistance Team

Program, Guidelines for Disaster

Response and Recovery Programs

(Washington, DC: The American

Institute of Architects, 1999): 7.

The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

After a long silence,

there seems to be a

revival of interest in

community design at

the AIA and within the

profession at large.

On May 17, 2008, Ambassador Andrew Young made a keynote speech in

Boston, entitled “Forty Years: The Anniversary of Whitney Young’s

Presentation to the Institute.” Interestingly, Ambassador Young’s speech

made no mention of the AIA’s engagement with community design centers.

Perhaps this is because they have largely failed to have a national impact,

despite local successes. This muted impact is unlikely to change without

additional resources. There are too few centers to do the volume of work

or influence policy in the ways that are necessary to enact national change.

There is also insufficient research and exchange to build the capacity of

practitioners to take their work to scale. Perhaps as a result, community

designers are not, in large part, taking the initiative to engage in national policy

discussions. Nor are the AIA, the federal government, academic institutions,

or policy think tanks actively mining the accumulated knowledge of almost

a half-century of engaged local design practice. There is hope that this will

change as a new generation of policy makers is recognizing the importance

of the comprehensive, community-based planning and implementation that

is fundamental to community design. Now is the time to start.

127The Community Design Movement’s Early Relationship with the AIA

Community designers

are not, in large part,

taking the initiative to

engage in national

policy discussions.

Anthony J. Costello

Response:

Stephen Vogel, FAIA

Actions

A11

Community Design Writ LargeAIA 150—Blueprint for America

When the American Institute of Architects (AIA) celebrated the 150th

anniversary of its founding in 2007, the major “grassroots” component was

the AIA 150—Blueprint for America initiative (BFA). Conceived by a blue

ribbon panel that began its work in 2004, the BFA was chaired by George

Miller, FAIA, who would then continue his leadership role as chairman of

the AIA 150 Oversight Task Group. The BFA panel was charged with

developing a year-long series of events that would be worthy of a

sesquicentennial celebration for the 80,000-member organization.

Numerous celebratory events were held by national, state, and local

components, including a very special one in New York City on April 18th,

the anniversary of the date the original group of 13 architects met in 1857

to receive the charter for the Institute. There were other significant

activities during 2007, including “America’s Favorite Architecture” in which

thousands of everyday people selected the best of 150 years of American

Architecture; “Creation of the 21st Century Workplace”, a major initiative

to totally redesign the AIA headquarters building, focusing on sustainable

design principles and optimum offices environments; and the publication of

Architecture: Celebrating the Past: Designing the Future, concerning the past,

present, and future of the architectural profession in our country. Although

the BFA was certainly the Institute’s most ambitious initiative ever

undertaken in terms of participation in community service activities, it was

by no means the first such program in which the institute has been

involved in community service and partnerships, as Kathleen Dorgan’s essay

in this book makes clear.11.1

129

11.1 In fact, the AIA, through the

foresight and dedication of a small

number of socially conscious members

who believed in community advocacy,

has distinguished itself through its R/

UDAT (Regional / Urban Design

Assistance Teams) Program since

sending a team in 1967 to Rapid City,

SD. This programs owes its existence to

a group of “Young Turks” that included

Jules Gregory, FAIA (now deceased);

David Lewis, FAIA FRIBA; Chuck

Redmond, FAIA; Johnny Desmond, FAIA

(now deceased); Larry Milello, FAIA

(now deceased); Charles Blessing, FAIA

(now deceased); and Ron Straka, FAIA.

This group of architects challenged the

Institute to step beyond the traditional

role of the architect that focused on the

design of a single building. Instead, they

became advocates for urban design and

activists for the social responsibility of

architecture. But maybe the most

innovative aspect of their activism was

the focus on engaging and empowering

citizens in developing a vision for the

future of their communities.

For the complete Footnote, please go

to the end of this essay.

Community Design Writ LargeAIA 150—Blueprint for America

Anthony J. Costello

150 Begins

In May 2005, the AIA 150 Oversight Task Group named a subgroup to

develop the objectives, schedule, methodology, criteria for funding, and

products of the BFA initiative. Then-AIA president, Doug Steidl, FAIA, asked

me to chair this committee and I gladly accepted.

Three major concepts were at the heart of the BFA. First, AIA architects

would work through their state and/or local chapters with an array of

diverse community partners, representing the public, nonprofit, and private

sectors. Second, architects and their partners would address their

communities’ distinct issues and needs—as designated and framed through

public discussion and consensus—with the goal of producing a shared

vision for a more livable and sustainable future. Third and finally, the

national AIA would act as a partner in a supporting role by providing

consultation, supplemental funding, public exposure, and the celebration of

results. Every chapter was invited to submit an application for

supplemental funds in 2006. As a result, almost $1.4 million dollars were

awarded to help offset the cost of chapter initiatives, allowing thousands of

architects in the AIA anniversary year of 2007 to provide pro bono services for

a diverse array of community-based service initiatives. These services were

provided to state and local government officials and agencies, nonprofit

organizations, social service agencies, allied professionals, community and

neighborhood-focused associations, schools of architecture, and local

citizens.

BFA Planning

It was determined early on that the most critical factors involving the

formulation of the BFA program were that it be community-driven,

participatory in its visioning methodologies, and dependent on public,

nonprofit, and private-sector partnerships. The central issues, visions,

strategies, and actions had to be agreed upon by all stakeholders as being

critical to the future quality of life in their region, city, town, or

neighborhood. In many cases, AIA architects facilitated these critical

community-based activities, although community partners maintained

ownership of the final issues or project to be addressed.

130Community Design Writ Large

Almost $1.4 million

dollars were awarded

to help offset the cost

of chapter initiatives,

allowing thousands of

architects in the AIA

anniversary year of

2007 to provide pro

bono services

In framing the evaluation criteria, priority was placed on AIA chapters

developing projects that were based on grassroots or “bottoms-up”

community-based methodologies. In addition, the criteria made clear that

although this was an AIA component-driven project, the participating AIA

members had to see themselves as community partners. AIA chapter

members also had to realize they were being called upon and challenged to be

civic leaders who would bring unique planning and design skills to a process of

creative problem solving.

In late 2005, each state and local chapter participating in the BFA initiative

was required to name a “champion,” a member of their component who

would provide the leadership and management necessary to make the

initiative or project successful. Champions ranged from ‘60s retreads, like

this author, to those emerging professionals who were Associate AIA

members. Another important function of the BFA group was to consult

with state and local components through either their champion or the

chapter’s AIA 150 planning committee. After at least four dozen face-to-

face consultations and many phone conversations with champions, some

common problems became apparent, shared by most local and state

components. In response, the committee developed two documents to

assist them, entitled, Ten Ways to Improve Your Application and Where’s the

Money? Recommendations Concerning Local Fundraising Efforts. Both guides

proved to be quite useful to chapters over the course of the initiative and

beyond.

In order to accommodate chapters that were far along by early 2006, as

well as those that simply did not have enough time to develop a viable

application, two rounds of grant submissions and reviews for funding were

established; one due on April 1 and a second on September 1, 2006. All

submissions for both rounds were blind-reviewed by a three-person staff

committee from the Center for Communities by Design and a four-person

committee of the BFA group, resulting in grants recommended in one of

three award categories: $15,000; $10,000; and $7,500. All told, $1.43 million

dollars were granted to 156 chapters.11.2

131Community Design Writ Large

11.2 Author’s note: It is safe to say that

this was not “business as usual” at

national AIA, in that prior mandates to

state and local component chapters

had seldom come with any funding of

any kind, let alone grants that totaled

well over one million dollars.

BFA in Action

The scale of initiatives that were undertaken varied greatly; state chapters

addressed state or even regionwide issues relevant both to politics and to

public policy, such as efforts to pass state legislation that would establish

sustainability standards for public buildings; approaches to regional issues

associated with the long-term, strategic planning for a river valley or major

transportation corridor; and promoting “smart growth” at a county or

municipal level. Many local chapters, often serving a large or medium-size

city and its metropolitan area, focused on smaller-scale issues that centered

on their community’s need for downtown and neighborhood revitalization,

affordable housing, adaptive reuse of historic buildings, or growth

management, also known as “smart growth.” In addition, given the stress

placed by the BFA on projects or initiatives leaving a legacy, several

communities chose to focus their efforts on creating an entity that would

become a vehicle for assuring that planning and design efforts would

continue to be based on the principles promoted by the Institute’s

Communities by Design program, resulting in the creation of a community-

based design studio that used the resources of local architects, fellow

professionals, and the local school(s) of architecture and planning through

pro bono and service-learning efforts. The following three projects—AIA

Memphis, AIA Indiana, and AIA Springfield —demonstrate the incredible

diversity of issues, contexts, process and products produced.11.3

Memphis Regional Design Center

The Memphis Regional Design Center initiative by AIA Memphis—with Lee

Askew, FAIA, as its champion—worked with the American Society of

Landscape Architects (ASLA), University of Memphis, Urban Arts

Commission, Urban Land Institute, and the University of Memphis to create

a regional design center as a vehicle for developing and implementing a

strategic plan to improve the quality of life of the three-state Memphis

Metropolitan Area (Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee) to initiate a public

education program explaining the concept and need for “buy-in” to ensure

its success. Consultants experienced in community design centers were

brought in to the initial public town meeting, including Steven Luoni,

132Community Design Writ Large

11.3 For the reader interested in all of

the projects, I recommend visiting the

AIA link that appears on the iconic

globe of the Google Earth website

Director of the University of Arkansas’ Community Design Center, and this

author.11.4

The steering committee for the Memphis Regional Design Center

represented major constituencies from the public, nonprofit, and private

sectors to investigate possible studio locations, alternative concepts of

administration, staffing and job descriptions, service-learning possibilities

with the University of Memphis, and sources for permanent funding. From

the outset, tremendous support came from the School of Architecture at

the University of Memphis, which ultimately resulted in the provost

committing substantial yearly financial support for the studio. By late 2008,

the Center had advertised for a Director of Design and selected two

potential sites for the studio. In addition, studios at the University of

Memphis School of Architecture were undertaking “demonstration

projects” to show the potential of this “town-gown” partnership.

Columbus, Indiana: Respecting the Past, Educating the Present, Designing the Future

Under the stewardship of Nolan Bingham, AIA, AIA Indiana worked with

Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives (CIAA), Columbus Visitors Center,

Ball State University Department of Architecture, and Indiana University-

Purdue University-Columbus to establish a series of activities under the

umbrella of “Columbus, Indiana: Respecting the Past, Educating the Present,

Designing the Future.” This multi-faceted project represents a unique

approach to both promoting and serving a city that has achieved an

international reputation for its 40-year commitment to the triad philosophy

that could be labeled: Good Design = High Quality of Life = Good

Business. It also represents a solution to a difficulty that some state chapter

components faced in trying to serve an entire state without alienating the

many local components in which a project did not take place.

It was easy for AIA Indiana to gain support from its four local chapters to

support the initiative in Columbus, especially since each of them had their

own BFA projects (3 funded; 1 that did not seek funding). The multi-faceted

project included:

133Community Design Writ Large

11.3 Author’s note: While a faculty

member at Ball State, I established their

Community Based Projects program in

1969 and the Muncie Urban Design

Studio in 1980.

1. Holding the 2007 AIA Indiana–AIA Kentucky Convention of the same

title in Columbus, Indiana.

2. Assisting the CIAA to develop a traveling exhibit that celebrated the

unparalleled number of Indiana architects and buildings that have been

recognized by the AIA, including 8 AIA Gold Medal winners, 5 AIA National

Honor Award-winning buildings, and 17 AIA Firms of the Year. Opening in

Columbus in August, it closed at the conclusion of the ’08 AIAIN-AIAKY

Convention. It was then exhibited in its entirety at Ball State University, and

a portion exhibited at the AIA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. from

April thru July 2008.

3. Ball State’s Chapter of AIAS holding a community-based charrette during

the convention, facilitated by Bruce Race, FAIA; and one in Evansville, IN

with the AIA Southern Chapter in November 2007.

4. Three student design competitions for projects in Columbus conducted

at Ball State University during the 2008 spring and summer semesters,

funded by the National Concrete Masonry Association, Indiana Concrete

Masonry Association, and Gresham Smith, Architects.

Although the grant amount was not significant, it proved very useful when

national recognition of the partnership was used to secure a $300,000

grant from the Cummins Community Foundation to support the growth

and staffing of the CIAA.

Blueprint for SpringfieldDesigning the Future of the Historic Downtown of Illinois’ Capitol City

In an amazing case of great ideas standing the test of time, AIA Springfield

in Illinois worked with a variety of partners under the championship of with

Robert I. Selby, FAIA, including the City of Springfield, the State of Illinois,

the Regional/Urban Design Assistance Team (R/UDAT) Follow-up

Committee, Destination Springfield, Springfield-Sagamon County Regional

Planning Commission, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum,

Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce and the University of Illinois at

Urbana-Champaign School of Architecture, used the BFA program to build

upon the AIA R/DAT team visit in 2002. The title assigned to this latter

134Community Design Writ Large

undertaking was “New Dimensions for Downtown Springfield: Preserving

the Past and Building the Future.” The 2007 project provided further

assistance for Springfield’s historic downtown by teaming with the City of

Springfield’s Office of Planning and Economic Development and the School

of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, both of

which had participated in the R/UDAT.

The R/UDAT report and other planning studies had all arrived at the same

critical conclusions about the lack of downtown housing, the lack of

activities that attract residents and visitors (increased dramatically with the

opening of the downtown-located, Lincoln Presidential Library and

Museum), and the loss of downtown’s retail role to suburban malls.

The project began in January 2007 with a public meeting/workshop that

allowed for the design team to ascertain up-to-date confirmation of the

major issues that the local public, nonprofit and private sectors from those

who beat know them. Thus, merchants, building owners and those involved

in municipal planning activities as well as cultural and tourist activities, were

given the opportunity to have input. Armed with this information, the

design teams undertook a series of design investigations, presented

preliminary designs and received feedback and then completed final

drawings. In April 2007 the design teams made a PowerPoint presentation

in the Illinois State Capitol Building to the public and the press. Public

reaction was most favorable.

Final thoughts

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate powers of the

society but the people themselves; and if we think them not

enlightened enough to exercise their control with a

wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them

but to inform their discretion.

I believe it is appropriate to end this chapter with this quote by Thomas

Jefferson, because as one who began my involvement in community-based,

service-learning activities—including participation in my first charrette—I

135Community Design Writ Large

have a very hard time believing how far the American Institute of

Architects (AIA) has come in the last 40 years.

In researching and writing about the pioneers and programs that built the

foundation upon which the AIA 150 Blueprint for America was based, it is

very reassuring to see the AIA focus its major sesquicentennial activity

directly involving the greatest number of its members in a socially

responsible public service initiative. This, along with its incorporation of the

term pro bono into the 2007 in The AIA Code of Ethics and the

development and issuing in 2008 of the AIA Guidelines on Pro Bono Services,

leads me to believe that a new paradigm involving our profession has been

forged and mainstreamed. The future looks very bright.

11.1 In fact, the AIA, through the foresight and dedication of a small number of socially conscious members

who believed in community advocacy, has distinguished itself through its R/UDAT (Regional / Urban Design

Assistance Teams) Program since sending a team in 1967 to Rapid City, SD. This programs owes its

existence to a group of “Young Turks” that included Jules Gregory, FAIA (now deceased); David Lewis, FAIA

FRIBA; Chuck Redmond, FAIA; Johnny Desmond, FAIA (now deceased); Larry Milello, FAIA (now

deceased); Charles Blessing, FAIA (now deceased); and Ron Straka, FAIA. This group of architects

challenged the Institute to step beyond the traditional role of the architect that focused on the design of a

single building. Instead, they became advocates for urban design and activists for the social responsibility of

architecture. But maybe the most innovative aspect of their activism was the focus on engaging and

empowering citizens in developing a vision for the future of their communities.

Now managed by the institute’s Center for Communities by Design, the R/UDAT program had, by

mid-2006, assisted 138 cities and towns by bringing together multi-disciplinary teams to identify ways to

encourage desirable change. The DAT (Design Assistance Team) approach—which can address social,

economic, political, and physical issues—offers communities a tool that mobilizes local support and fosters

new levels of cooperation.

Offered as a public service of the institute, the R/UDAT program has used a charrette-style, visioning

approach to help create livable communities. Combining local resources and citizen participation with the

expertise of professionals from across the nation, the team undertakes an intensive, four-day, workshop on

site, with emphasis on engaging all members of the community in creating a vision for the future. Obviously,

the BFA initiative owes much of its concept and format to this Institute program that has distinguished itself

for over 40 years.

A second program that has served as a model for the initiative is the relatively new Sustainable Design

Assistance Team (SDAT) program, initiated in 2005. Although patterned somewhat on the R/UDAT model,

the SDAT program is focused on providing a broad assessment to help frame any future policies or design

solutions in a community in the context of the principles of sustainability. SDATs bring teams of volunteer

professionals (such as architects, urban designers, planners, hydrologists, economists, attorneys and others)

to work with community decision-makers and stakeholders to help them to formulate a vision and

framework for a sustainable future. They use a three-day, charrette styled methodology that directly

engages local participants in developing a roadmap for them to improve their community’s sustainability. In

2006, eight communities—from Guemes Island, Washington, to Syracuse, New York—were chosen to

receive this technical assistance.

Continue Reading

136Community Design Writ Large

Anthony Costello’s informative summary of the AIA150 initiative and the

Blueprint for America shows how local, state, and national AIA components

engaged in grassroots efforts to improve the built environment and fulfill

the promise of community service for our profession. It was an important

effort because it took the AIA away from the somewhat common

perception of architects as builders of formal monuments for wealthy

corporations, governments, or individuals. Seven years after AIA150, the

question remains: Has AIA national gone back to “business as usual,” or

does it have a more enlightened outlook on the profession’s role in

addressing the ills of our urban areas and bringing enlightened younger

people into the profession. Costello’s ending remark that the “future looks

bright” is somewhat preempted by what we have learned from the

economic downturn in the first decade of this century, a downturn that

devastated the profession.

I am happy to report that after the hiccup of the recession, the AIA has

emerged as a stronger and more nimble national organization than before,

ready to engage not only community issues but also broader global issues.

It has completely changed its governance structure to a significantly smaller

Board of Directors to manage the institute; but has, in turn, created a

Strategic Council whose role is to think about the future and how

architects might bring their creative ability to improving the built

environment for all people, including the underserved.12.5 In addition,

diverse, young emerging professionals are actively involved in the AIA at all

levels of the organization, including the Council. Several strategic initiatives

are well under way as a result of this change. These initiatives, which

generally fall under the category of sustainability, include Design and Health,

Resilience, Energy, and Materials. The first three are significant in regard to

community engagement.

137Response: After 150: What Is AIA Up to Now?

Response

After 150: What Is AIA Up to Now?Stephen Vogel, FAIA

11.5 “AIA Adopts New Board

Structure,” American Institute of

Architects, June 28, 2014, http://

www.aia.org/press/AIAB104198.

(Accessed March 12, 2015)

After the hiccup of the

recession, the AIA has

emerged as a stronger

and more nimble

national organization

than before.

Design and Health

The impact of the design of cities and buildings on the health of individuals

has been clearly shown. The research of Richard Jackson, MD, former public

director of the AIA, is notable in this regard. The AIA has partnered with

the Clinton Global Initiative and others to commission a ten-year research

study by MIT to explore this subject in more detail.12.6 There is little doubt

that quality neighborhoods that are walkable, connected to mass transit,

near sources of fresh food, and within easy reach of recreation, schools and

employment centers must be the goal of the profession to ensure healthy

individuals and communities. The AIA is fully committed to this concept,

investing significant dollars in efforts to promote it. The first-ever AIA

sponsored Design and Health Summit, attended by the Acting U.S. Surgeon

General, is another example of this ongoing effort.

Resilience

Resilience promotes design that is adaptable to changing climate conditions

and resulting natural disasters, but that also that responds to man-made

disasters such as the abandonment of post-industrial cities. The creation of

design centers has gained tremendous momentum in the United States

including those initiated by the AIA 150 Blueprint for America and promoted

by the AIA’s Communities by Design program. Added to that is now the goal

of creating five Regional Resilient Design Studios in partnership with

Architecture for Humanity and Public Architecture and funded in part by

the new AIA Foundation. These centers will be located in coastal areas of

the United States. The first center has been launched at the New Jersey

Institute of Technology. These centers will focus on urban and building

design responses that respond to natural disasters. In addition, the Center

for Communities by Design launched the pilot for resilience strategies to

address sea level rise in Bath, Maine and Provincetown, MA. Information

from these strategies has been promulgated across the globe. The AIA has

also trained scores of architects to be part of the Safety Assessment

Program and HURRIPLAN Resilient Design for Coast Construction.

138Response: After 150: What Is AIA Up to Now?

11.6 “Plan 84: Designing Healthy Cities,”

MIT School of Architecture + Planning,

March 2013, http://sap.mit.edu/article/

standard/designing-healthy-cities.

(Accessed March 12, 2015)

Energy

The building industry is a major consumer of fossil fuels and a significant

contributor to green house gases. Consequently, the AIA and many of the

architectural firms in the United States have adopted the 2030 Challenge

that calls for all buildings in the United States to be carbon neutral by the

year 2030. In fact, during the last ten years, advances in building design have

put us ahead of schedule to meet the goal. The AIA has been instrumental in

furthering the goal of carbon-neutral buildings through the Union of

International Architects (UIA), which recently adopted the goal of being carbon

neutral globally by the year 2050. The AIA formally adopted the 2050

Challenge in September 2014.

The longstanding AIA R/UDAT (Regional/Urban Design Assistance

Team) program is still very much in existence and serving communities

across America. This program essentially brings architects and planners

together at the invitation of communities to brainstorm how they will

address physical community issues. Now, however, an SDAT (Sustainable

Design Assessment Team) program also exists to work with communities

toward long-term sustainability. Tool kits have been developed to assist

communities to organize to address local issues.

Conclusion

This response to Costello’s original essay provides only a sampling of

efforts at the AIA. One thing is clear : the AIA has come out of the

recession a much more nimble and viable organization. Although AIA

members must address many internally focused issues, there is a strong

commitment to a widespread external focus to show communities and the

world the value of architecture in dealing with the most pressing issues

facing us as a society. Additionally, there is an embracing of our young and

diverse members as they become the voice of the “new” AIA. To affirm

Anthony Costello’s own closing statement, there really is a bright future

ahead.

139Response: After 150: What Is AIA Up to Now?

The AIA has been

instrumental in

furthering the goal of

carbon-neutral

buildings through the

Union of International

Architects (UIA), which

recently adopted the

goal of being carbon

neutral globally by the

year 2050.

Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA

Actions

A12

The Seattle and Detroit Design

The charrette, a mainstay of École des Beaux-Arts architectural education

that fell out of favor with the rise of Modernism, has been revived in both

the academy and the profession in recent decades.12.1

What is a contemporary charrette? It is essentially a design workshop,

usually one that focuses on the urban scale. A succinct description is “an

illustrated brainstorm.” Two basic types have emerged: the competitive

charrette in which multiple schemes are developed for the same site by

different teams, and the collaborative charrette in which a single scheme is

developed by teams that focus on different aspects (land use,

transportation, etc.), subareas of the same site, or separate sites altogether.

This essay will focus on the two dozen academic charrettes that I organized

in as many years, starting at the University of Washington in 1985 and at

the University of Michigan in 1999. They were usually four- or five-day

competitive charrettes that brought together three or four teams to

generate and present different visions for the same project and site.

Typically, each team was led by one or two distinguished visiting

professionals (architect, urban designer, landscape architect, or urban

planner), one or two leading local design professionals, and one or two

members of the design faculty. They co-led a team of ten to fifteen

graduate students from architecture, urban design, urban planning, and

landscape architecture programs, sometimes from more than one

university. Most teams tended to operate like temporary offices, with the

professionals and faculty members acting as design partners and the

students as the design and production team, although the roles, modes, and

methodologies varied with the composition of the teams and their

leadership.

Each charrette began with a morning-long bus and/or walking tour of the

site and environs, led by local residents and professionals. After lunch, there

141

The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA

12.1 Editors’ note: In the realm of

community design, charrettes provide

an important tool for leveling and

addressing the conventional hierarchies

of the architectural profession, inviting

direct engagement between architects

and their community clients in creating

a vision for places.

was an afternoon of up to a dozen short briefings by community leaders,

landowners, government officials, and business leaders, as well as financial

and technical consultants. These speakers were indispensable, and were

carefully chosen based on the overt and latent problems and

opportunities suggested by the project or site. In some cases, community

residents became working team members, but more often participated as

consultants or observers, due to the extended duration and technical nature

of a workshop.

Following the briefings, the teams worked independently for three or four

days in the same space or an adjacent one, in an atmosphere of friendly

and open competition. First, they discussed and distilled the information

provided during the briefings and from data or literature made available

onsite or found on the Web. (In some cases, students prepared by doing

preliminary research and analyses in their design studio before the

charrette.) The teams brainstormed ideas based on what they perceived

to be the needs and opportunities of the site itself, as well as on advice

and information offered by the residents, stakeholders, and consultants.

There was no written program or problem statement. It was up to each

team to tease out “the highest and best use” of the site. In the early stages,

the teams engaged in no-holds-barred discussions as they considered and

tested ideas from all participants. Initially, no idea was too radical, too

obvious, or too obscure. Many design and planning concepts quickly

proliferated during this fertile and imaginative stage (Figure 1).

142The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

In some cases,

community residents

became working team

members, but more

often participated as

consultants or

observers.

Figure 1

As acceptable ideas were generated, team leaders often sorted themselves

and the students into sub-teams for additional research and development

of options that were periodically presented to other members of the team

in pin-ups. About halfway through the process, usually toward the end of

the second day, options were winnowed down and an overall strategy

emerged by consensus. If no clear consensus emerged in time, team

leaders adopted a strategy based on prevailing ideas or their own

preferences. Then the mode and methodology changed, quickly and

dramatically, from expansive brainstorming to a disciplined focus on the

production of drawings, images, and text. The second half of the event was

usually a feverish team effort—a race, sometimes exhilarating and

sometimes panicky, to effectively illustrate the creative explosion of ideas in

the first half. Sometimes important or defining ideas came later in the process,

making the scramble to the deadline all the more intense.

The workshop culminated with a public event that included an exhibit of

the drawings (and occasional model), a reception, and a 15 to 20 minute

presentation by each team—all at a prominent venue within or near the

project area. The general public, stakeholders, business and institutional

leaders, government officials, and the media were notified by printed and

emailed invitations, as well as by word of mouth. The crowds ranged from

200 to 400 people and the media coverage usually included local TV

stations and newspapers. Shortly after the charrette, CDs containing the

presentations (originally color slides, later digital) from both the initial

briefings and the team presentations were distributed to key people and

parties. At the end of the semester, a 32– to 64-page color booklet

detailing the design proposals was published, and hundreds of

complimentary copies distributed to a larger audience. More than just a

chronicle and archive of the event, the publications were meant to publicize

and help catalyze and implement proposed concepts and designs (Figure 2).

143The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

Sometimes important

or defining ideas came

later in the process,

making the scramble to

the deadline all the

more intense.

Figure 2

The charrettes typically dealt with an urban design and planning issue,

project, or site of local significance. Several variants emerged: ones some to

test and illustrate new public policies or design ideas on real sites; some to

respond to requests for help from community/civic organizations or

government agencies; and some to explore a particularly glaring problem

or promising opportunity offered by a specific site. Most charrettes were

hybrids, for example testing new ideas on a promising empty or under-

utilized site. They always addressed real problems on real sites for real clients

and users, as opposed to being a theoretical or academic exercise for the

sake of the students (although the pedagogic benefits were manifold). The

sites varied in size from 50 to 500 acres, preferably ripe if not already on

the radar for development or redevelopment.

The level of feasibility among these proposals varied from project to

project and from team to team, and whether the time horizon of the

proposal was ten, twenty, or more years. Some proposed designs were

unrealistically ambitious or visionary, but most proposals tended to seek the

sweet spot between an inspiring vision and a feasible proposition. In any

case, the results were more illustrative than definitive, and only one step,

preferably early, in the longer planning and development process.

144The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

The charrettes always

addressed real

problems on real sites

for real clients and

users.

Befitting a public university, these charrettes worked with public agencies,

organizations, or institutions, and resisted requests from the private sector.

It became clear over time that these compressed, adrenaline-driven

brainstorms were more appropriate to large, open sites that lend

themselves to bold concepts and broadbrush schemes (as opposed to

mature neighborhoods and districts, for which semester-long design studios

are more appropriate). They consistently generated more imaginative ideas

and proposals than the conventional, linear design that consulting would

likely have produced. The chemistry of collaboration within teams and

competition between teams engendered generated remarkable levels of

energy, creativity, and productivity. Without fail, the charrettes produced some

ideas that could only emerge in this type of a multi-generational,

interdisciplinary process.

The event itself produced considerable local buzz and publicity. There were

usually follow-up presentations to community groups and stakeholders, and

the events were often publicized in the local print and aired on TV and

radio. Sometimes they precipitated the commissioning of further studies or

actual built projects or both. The workshops always generated visions for

the public and provided palpable imagery and imaginative ideas for public

discussion, digestion, and dissemination, as well as for adoption by the

community and eventual implementation. In any case, they elevated the

level of public consciousness in proactive, positive, and provocative ways

that seemed to be widely appreciated and respected by all parties.

Some charrettes, however, experienced external and internal problems and

challenges: they raised the community’s expectations too high; they

proposed unrealistic, extravagant, and unworkable schemes; some student

participants found them too disjointed and unevenly paced or felt their

ideas were under-appreciated or overlooked altogether; some faculty felt

too much college staff time and resources were expended on them; and

some were not as well conceived or executed and produced more heat

than light. Ironically, the Detroit charrettes were often appreciated and

valued more outside than inside the college. Indeed, some groups and

organizations requested, even competed, to have one in their community,

and some citizens faithfully attended the public presentations annually

(Figures 3,4).

145The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

Without fail, the

charrettes produced

some ideas that could

only emerge in this

type of a multi-

generational,

interdisciplinary

process.

Figure 3

Figure 4

146The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

Generally, funds of $10,000 to $50,000, plus in-kind services, were raised

from the University, local donors, corporations, foundations, and agencies.

(The City of Detroit, which was financially strapped, was never asked for

any financial or in-kind contributions; the charrettes were essentially an

annual gift.) Although expensive to mount for an academic institution, it

can be argued that their market value was considerably greater. Indeed,

conducting a similar event entirely with fully paid professionals and staff

would cost several hundred thousand dollars. It was better when they were

underwritten by arms-length sponsors and not the stakeholders per se, so

that the participants were not beholden to, or unduly influenced by, a single

player or constituency. This design freedom and autonomy was more

conducive to a healthy and open-minded visioning process.

In conclusion, the Seattle and Detroit charrettes were a highly effective

technique to enlarge the gene pool of ideas for a project or site—ideas

that were later be modified, adopted, or discarded. They have been aptly

described as the best way to get the most creative proposals for the most

challenging problems from the most accomplished designers in the shortest

period of time. They were a highly effective and engaging way to help

stakeholders—community residents, municipal officials, government

agencies, institutions, and developers—develop a sense of shared

ownership and common vision essential to moving projects forward in a

democratic society. In short, these design workshops jumpstarted new

development (although not as frequently as hoped); consolidated diverse

sites and projects; gathered data and citizen input; expanded public

consciousness and imagination; and promoted bold ideas and visions that a

“neutral but knowledgeable” academic institution can best put forth and

test with the public.

Also, despite their challenges and shortcomings, these charrettes were a

positive academic experience, embodying in a single event the University’s

tri-partite mission of teaching, research, and service. They were also

interdisciplinary, an increasingly important and meaningful imperative in

higher education. They provided a rich opportunity to teach students

invaluable lessons in design and planning, as well as in working closely with

top local and visiting practitioners and academics. They were good practice

147The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

for students in the difficulties, pleasures, and benefits of collaborative

teamwork, which architecture students generally do not sufficiently

experience in their design studios. (Many of the professionals also claimed

to benefit from the experience and, despite the modest honoraria, some

asked to be invited back.) The workshops were also a form of research in

that they explored and tested prevailing and new ideas, as well as proposed

new solutions to particular problems and issues. (Several books based on the

charrettes were published.) They were clearly a community service, offered

pro bono to the public, supported by corporations, foundations, individual

donors, and thousands of hours of student, faculty, and staff sweat equity.

And they were often fun, despite the hard work and long hours, often with

late-night social interaction between and among the students and the team

leaders. Lastly, the workshops provided a highly transparent public forum

and highly visible event in which the University partnered with the

community to envision and discuss the future. For these many reasons, the

two dozen charrettes proved a good investment of institutional, financial

and community resources, while enriching the design and planning

education of more than 2,000 students, and advancing the local and

national dialogue about the future of the city in which the charrettes took

place.

148The Seattle and Detroit Design Charrettes

The workshops were

also a form of research

in that they explored

and tested prevailing

and new ideas, as well

as proposed new

solutions to particular

problems and issues.

Stephen Luoni

Actions

A13

An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

[L]abeling an architecture “Palladian” was an act of supreme

significance. It distinguished the designer from the

indissoluble unity of environmental form and culture that had

until then brought forth buildings and entire urban fields,

embodying skills and knowledge. From Palladio on,

architecture has been identified with individual architects.

Everything else—the entirety of the ordinary built field

where form, inhabitant and maker are functionally integrated

and semantically joined—has remained obscure or self-

evident. This has inevitably led to the emancipation—and the

isolation—of an entire professional culture from the

integrated field of form and people.

Palladio’s Children, N.J. Habraken

As professional cultures, the design disciplines—architecture, landscape

architecture, planning, and urban design—are to some degree required to

internalize public service within their spectrum of work. Indeed, as many

contributors to this book have maintained, the vitality of any profession is

directly tied to its relation with the public, given that “some figure of the

public or agent of the public can be detected below the surface of

professional work…something like a professional unconscious.”13.1 Unlike

work in the trades, vocations, and commerce, professions bear a special

obligation to multiple constituencies beyond an immediate client in the

delivery of services. For example, medicine—once a scattered field of

healers without shared methodologies—did not emerge as a profession

until it solved for public health concerns, particularly for the early 20th

century influenza epidemic. Professions are organizationally akin to their

predecessors, the guilds, which regulated school curriculum, admission into

150

An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

Stephen Luoni

13.1 Bruce Robbins. Secular Vocations:

Intellectuals, Professionalism, Culture.

(London: Verso, 1993). 88.

practice, work methodology, knowledge production, market practice, and

relations to the state among their members.13.2 Given their cognitive

monopolies over areas of knowledge, professions are uniquely positioned

to balance private market interests with non-market obligations to the

public good. It is within this complex matrix of commerce, research,

education, and service that nonprofit community design practice

commands a critical role in the design professions.

Nonprofit Production Models

Nonprofit activity represents important intersectional work conducted

between the commercial drives of the market and the guardianship role

that is the work of government, the latter focused on regulation and

enforcement.13.3 Nonetheless, nonprofit work is commonly assumed to be

little more than remediation of marketplace or government failures. This

dominant assumption is countered by Peter Frumkin, director of the RGK

Center for Philanthropy and Community Service at the University of Texas,

who outlines a deeper ecology of nonprofit work stemming from plural –

and often entrepreneurial – motivations. He outlines four essential

functions of nonprofit activity: 1. civic and political engagement, 2. service

delivery to communities, 3. values and faith expression, and 4. social

entrepreneurship.13.4 Although a great deal of nonprofit activity achieves

balance among these functions, the missions of most organizations are

highlighted by an emphasis on one of them. Extending the theoretical

lineage established by Burton Weisbrod of Northwestern and Henry

Hansmann of Yale, Frumkin explores two programmatic tendencies

bracketing production in nonprofit organizations: demand-side orientation

and supply-side orientation.13.5

Demand-side production models in nonprofit organizations can be

described as stemming from market and government failures to provide

necessary services, creating classes of underserved populations. This

nonprofit sector is service-oriented, organized around identifying and

fulfilling unmet needs for vital human services. The root causes

necessitating corrective action may vary – ranging from the market’s

inability to profitably serve certain sectors, government’s incapacity to

151An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.2 Elliot A. Krause. Death of the Guilds:

Professions, States, and the Advance of

Capitalism, 1930 to the Present. (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

13.3 For the distinction between the

“commercial syndrome” and the

“guardian syndrome,” see Jane Jacobs.

Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the

Moral Foundations of Commerce and

Politics. (New York: Vintage, 1994).

13.4 Peter Frumkin. On Being Nonprofit:

A Conceptual and Policy Primer.

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

2002) 164.

13.5 Frumkin,,65-67.

mitigate market effects and downturns (an important government

function), or to either sector’s failure in developing responses to new and

unprecedented needs. Here, nonprofit activity is organized around under-

representation, neglect, or distress. Accordingly, production is framed by

remedial objectives towards helpful ends. Supply-side production models

have been observed to arise from the expressive and entrepreneurial

instincts of individual efforts to incubate venture initiatives that test the

limits and/or extend objectives of the marketplace and government work.

Motivated by the internal need to innovate or demonstrate their

fundamental value system, this nonprofit sector focuses on shaping

priorities and policy reform through entrepreneurial methods. Whether

advocating for important issues that have no champion, or communicating

values and beliefs to a broader public, this nonprofit work has emerged as

a major cultural force in developing new practices and new arenas of social

capital. This is evidenced by the dramatic rise in venture philanthropy

funding, mirroring the venture capital funds that underwrote the recent

exploration of new high-tech industries. More such entrepreneurial capacity

is expected from the market—the traditional site of innovation—than from

nonprofit work. If demand-side production is a reactive response to the

effects of the immediate, supply-side initiatives are proactive responses to

visions of the future.

Some may argue that the goals of community-based nonprofit

organizations differ from the institutional goals of universities, whose

primary purpose is education, not service delivery.13.6 To the contrary, land-

grant universities, and certainly professional schools within land-grant

universities, have an extensive tradition of integrating research, extension,

and service with education. In fact, for land-grant institutions, such efforts

are part and parcel of their reason for being. Let’s also not forget that the

most prestigious private universities started out as “community colleges,”

with service beyond education in their DNA. Land-grant universities’ multi-

pronged service to community and nation-building played a significant role

in shaping the modern profession and its entwinement in the nonprofit

sector.

152An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.6 Michael Rios. “Where Do We Go

From Here? An Evaluative Framework

for Community-Based Design”. Studio to

the Streets: Service Learning in Planning

and Architecture. M.C. Hardin, ed.

(Sterling, VA: Stylus, 2006), 55.

The Problem of Institutional Infrastructure

Within the context of commerce, research, and education, community

design practices facilitate the civic engagement, service delivery, values

expression, and social entrepreneurship so fundamental to the vitality of

professional culture. Yet community design practice is primarily categorized

– sometimes by its own practitioners – to be a discrete fringe or crusader

activity for an underclass neglected by market-based design practice. This is

an inadequate conceptualization of the sector. Furthermore, market-based

practices are not incapable of progressivist tendencies in the delivery of

services. Indeed, some of the more superior attainable housing products

and progressive community planning projects are consistently executed by

for-profit design practices.13.7 Certainly in the field of planning and urban

design, both government-based planners—the majority of planning

professionals—and market-based professionals internalize the public good

in decision making. Such polarizations between nonprofit and for-profit

practice represent “market failure” theories, and overlook the more

complex web of relations possible among functionaries within the

profession. There is plenty of work to be done in the nonprofit sector,

involving both equity and innovation. As such, community design practices

possess significant yet untapped potential for institution-building within the

structures of the design professions. How might nonprofit design practice

models be mobilized to address pressing public service needs related to

energy and the environment, sprawl and smart growth, livable communities,

and policy impact on physical design?

Professions are more than a collection of individual practices. Compared to

law, medicine, teaching, and engineering, the design professions are

institutionally weak, lacking robust research, service, and public policy-setting

platforms from which to frame greater degrees of influence for individual

practice (i.e., the public still has little understanding for the design

professions’ potential in creating good environments). Individual medical

practices, for example, do not solve for research problems in fighting

cancer or evaluating therapeutic standards. They are supported by an

enterprising nonprofit research and policy infrastructure involving schools,

teaching hospitals, and institutes. Such an intersectional disciplinary

153An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.7 Josephine Minutillo. “High Design

from a Low-Tech Approach.”

Architectural Record. (October 2008).

infrastructure in architecture, working between education and practice,

would feature community design centers. Community design practices can

pursue integrative research and venture initiatives not feasible in market-

based practices or classroom settings. Arguably this institutional weakness in

the design professions is less an ethical shortfall—as has been argued

elsewhere in this book by Wilkins and others—than a crisis of imagination

hinted at by Vogel, though this lack of broad-based institutional

resourcefulness is often cast as a result of the former.

The Products Of A Budding Institutional Infrastructure

Sample work from a cross-section of community design centers is

considered for their collective potential to enhance the design professions’

status with their public. While their individual missions vary considerably,

two-thirds of these centers are housed in research-oriented universities.

This is a curious fact, since most are demand-side practices; that is, they

structure their service delivery around neglect and distress. Without

question, demand-side practices are a shared imperative and a key

indicator of a profession’s ethical standing. Such work is certainly important,

particularly in the area of service learning, and offers a potential foothold

toward systemic reform. What is questionable, though, is the

entrepreneurial capacity of design schools, and most particularly their

leadership, to develop new arenas of sustained professional capital, market

activity, or agenda-setting public policy. Is the institutional infrastructure of

the design professions radically underutilized, especially that of their

schools? The professions, as sociologist Elliot Krause reminds us, were not a

product of the marketplace but rather of the universities.13.8

Demand-side Practices

The world of nonprofit community design practice is hardly monolithic. The

motivations behind nonprofit work vary considerably among its

practitioners, and are reflected in their organizational structures.

Community design practices in this group share missions, methodologies,

and work outcomes oriented toward targeted service delivery and civic/

political engagement. Their stated interests lie primarily with solving for

154An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.8 Krause,11.

prevailing socio-environmental inadequacies that have arisen from under-

representation, neglect, or distress through participatory means.13.9

In addressing under-representation, neglect, and distress, demand-side

oriented practices emphasize targeted service delivery and/or expressions

of civic engagement. As such, these practices face unique challenges. A

common challenge for any nonprofit organization involves maintaining

balance among the four functions distinguishing nonprofit activity—civic

engagement, service delivery, values expression, and social

entrepreneurship. Being unbalanced in nonprofit activity, according to

Frumkin, “can lead to charges of politicization, vendorism, particularism, and

commercialism.”13.10 Demand-side practices focused on the instrumental

rationale in service delivery must guard against the problem of vendorism

and the loss of a wider, comprehensive public purpose that comes with a

narrowing definition of services. Practices tied to a single source of funding

or the interests of one group are especially vulnerable to vendorism.

Competition with for-profit practices can also become a concern, as

services predominantly provided by the nonprofit sector—particularly

those related to housing and community-scale planning—become

mainstreamed and professionalized by the market, prompting a difficult

refocusing of nonprofit activities due to their own successes.

Demand-side practices, which focus on the expressive rationale in civic

engagement, face the danger of politicization unattended by action, service

delivery, or other forms of instrumental practice. Activism has recently re-

emerged as a leitmotif energizing some community design initiatives, and

when stretched to the level of branding, becomes as heroic and polarizing

as the star-based design practices they implicitly critique. Accountability is a

particular challenge in curriculum-based outreach where internal

155An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.9 Some examples listed in alphabetical order not by priority:

ASSIST Inc

East St. Louis Action Research Project (ESLARP)

Environmental Works (EW)

Gulf Coast Community Design Studio (GCCDS)

Miami University Center for Community Engagement in Over-The-Rhine

The Catholic University of America Design Collaborative (CUAdc)

University of Cincinnati Community Design Center

Yale Urban Design Workshop (YUDW)

13.10 Frumkin,180.

pedagogical goals serve its members (students) first. If not balanced

accordingly, such efforts unwittingly sideline the needs of community

populations for which outreach plans are supposedly formulated. This can

lead to the framing of community needs as simply emblematic and raises

the question: whose interests are being served? Service learning presents

considerable resource challenges and time commitments to schools, in

terms of securing an expected quality of work. Raising false hopes within

client communities is a persistent critique roundly made against university-

based community design centers, both from within and outside of the

design professions.

Supply-side Practices

Community design practices in this category claim their mission as

innovation through social entrepreneurship rather than an immediate focus

on equity. Like demand-side practices, equally committed to participatory

methods and a triple-bottom line—linking social equity, environmental

issues, and economic development—supply-side design practices target

development of venture approaches to livability issues. Motivated by the

internal need to innovate and/or demonstrate an intrinsic value system, this

nonprofit sector focuses on shaping priorities and barrier busting through

entrepreneurial methods.13.11

Like their demand-side colleagues, these supply-side practices also face

intrinsic challenges to their missions of developing social capital through

entrepreneurial means. Supply-side practices focused on the instrumental

rationale in social entrepreneurship must guard against reproducing the

same neglect of underserved communities prevalent in the market-based

sector.13.12 This was certainly a criticism against earlier incarnations of New

Urbanism activity, when well-capitalized suburban developers were their

only client class. Can the entrepreneurial impulse maintain an equitable and

responsive nonprofit sector? Frumkin warns: “In short, the concern is that

156An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.11 Some examples listed in alphabetical order not by priority:

Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC)

Florida Community Design Center (FCDC)

University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC)

Urban Ecology (UE Oakland)

Vermont Design Institute (VDI)

13.12 Frumkin, 165.

entrepreneurs will select the most appealing, satisfying, and manageable

products, leaving the most difficult and dangerous work undone.”13.13 This is

reinforced by the reality that middle-class markets are typically the first

consumers of innovation and thus supply tends to efficiently create its own

closed loop of demand. Yet, if these supply-side community design practices

are any indication of trends, the primary beneficiary of their innovation is

the government sector, a better agent for redistributive justice by way of

policy and regulation than the market.

Conclusion: “Supply Creates its Own Demand”

The medical profession vividly demonstrates the famous axiom by

eighteenth-century economist Jean-Baptiste Say: “supply creates its own

demand.” Community design is an untapped supply for problem-solving

ventures in energy and the environment, sprawl and smart growth, livable

communities, and policy impact on physical design and social equity. These

practices pose unique design problems in context-production, a lost

intelligence in the contemporary academy. Emerging programs in landscape

urbanism, as one example, hold promise for a revival of this broad-based

skill set once held by most practitioners. Here, supply-siders would argue

that all markets are underserved, not just communities in distress. This

represents the design professions’ primary traction for renegotiating a more

relevant and meaningful status with the public. That most schools of design

do not seriously support community design centers with measurable

impact on their states and communities, and own institutional infrastructure

signals an under-capacity in the educational sector, and failed leadership that

has missed the opportunity to restructure the profession’s dependency on

market forces through the creation of new professional capital (e.g., New

Urbanism) and new arenas of work in research and design.

Active community design centers need to collectively illustrate a better

case for community design. Whereas they have potential to be program

anchors, community design centers currently function more as a fringe or

rogue endeavors distant from the curriculum, with tepid administrative

support. Part of this may be that service learning through design centers

has not made any discernible or appreciable broad-based disciplinary

contributions to the rich cross-section of planning and design instruments

157An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.13 Frumkin,140.

and methodologies collectively found in the mainstream studio culture of

schools. Problem-based learning offers a more robust frame than service

learning for realizing disciplinary enrichment and community engagement.

On this point, planning educator, Rex Curry, is insightful:

In developing a working relationship between a university and

a community there is a difference in the questions that define

problem-based learning and service-based learning. ‘What

problems are we trying to solve?’ is quite different from ‘What

service are we capable of providing?’ The first question

attempts to define the issues; the second is a take-it-or-leave-

it proposition.13.14

Problem-based education would thicken curriculum development through

more adaptive studio methods and meta-disciplinary strategies that cross

epistemological realms.

Employment of comprehensive participatory processes is an inadequate

form of legitimization for community design practices, and an inaccurate

point of distinction from market-based practices. Participatory processes

are roundly institutionalized in contemporary design education, and used by

most design practices (try designing a hospital, church, school, library, or

park without stakeholder participation). Community design should be

valorized through the impact of its solutions. While community design

centers are delivering good work at the level of the project, there is a

collective lack of structured and organized engagement with larger social

forces far better organized. The challenge is institutional, as solutions have

to be as elegant as the problem.

158An Ecology of Nonprofit Design Practices

13.14 Rex Curry. “Community Design

Centers”. Good Deeds, Good Design:

Community Service Through Architecture,

Bryan Bell, ed. (New York: Princeton

Architectural Press, 2004), 65.

Jana Cephas

Reflections

A14

The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

Since their inception, community design centers (CDCs) have had a

physical, organizational, and economic influence in urban, suburban, and

rural communities. Their new construction, adaptive reuse, and historic

renovation projects are tangible efforts that breathe new life into

communities. By changing the physical fabric of neighborhoods, CDCs give

residents an increased sense of pride in the places they live, work, and play,

as well as attracting newcomers to revitalized areas.

CDCs also exert intangible influence on organizational structures within

communities, in addition to supporting desirable and sustainable growth

through the implementation and adjustment of regulatory rules, zoning

laws, design guidelines, tax structures, and conservation proposals. The

economic contribution of CDCs to neighborhoods can be just as financially

critical as that of for-profit organizations, because CDCs often function as

local ‘businesses’ providing jobs, grants, and loans, plus social support

structures. Finally, these collective influences foster social and cultural

development, including encouraging and maintaining racial and ethnic

diversity, stabilizing working-class and poor neighborhoods, encouraging

mixed-income and non-traditional residential developments, providing

venues for arts and culture, and establishing new educational opportunities

in the communities in which they work. The rest of this essay addresses the

above influences in greater detail.

Physical Effects: Sustaining Communities

As previously mentioned by Blake and Vogel, when the earliest community

design centers were established in the late 1960s, many of them were

responding to the decay of urban centers. Architects, planners, and

community activists sought to directly address the problems of the urban

interior by applying innovative design strategies to ailing communities.

160

The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

Jana Cephas

Prioritizing safe, clean, and beautiful spaces for communities still serves as

the basis for the work of many design centers today. While new and

renovated physical structures provide the necessary space for working and

living, the physical redesign of neighborhoods and interior spaces also have

an important psychological effect on residents. Clean and fully functioning

spaces reflecting the desires and goals of a community can bring a sense of

pride and dignity to public and private places. Well-designed interiors can

provide residents with a sense of comfort and safety, allowing them to

attend to more pressing issues in their lives. Thus, the physical design of

spaces is critical to the sustenance of communities, and the work done by

community design centers provides an important foundation for long-term

community health. An excellent example of this influence can be found in

the form of environmental WORKS (EW), a nonprofit community design

center founded in Seattle in 1970.

Through a focus on environmental sustainability as a critical element in

social and economic sustainability and the creation of sustainable

architecture for low-income residents, EW plays an important role in

reshaping Seattle communities. Their flagship project, Traugott Terrace, was

the first LEED-certified affordable housing project in the United States. The

goal of Traugott Terrace was to provide fifty units of ‘clean and sober’

housing for low-income individuals. It is made up of studio and one-

bedroom apartments, transitional housing units, common areas, an

outdoor deck and caseworker offices for the Matt Talbott Center, an

organization aiding individuals with alcohol dependencies and other

addictions.

While it is important to provide the basics of housing for people in need,

Traugott Terrace goes beyond the minimal by providing an exquisitely beautiful

living environment that serves as an important stabilizer for its residents.

Providing spaces that can afford struggling individuals a sense of dignity and

self worth is just as important as providing safe and clean spaces, especially

considering that many Traugott Terrace residents may have found previous

shelters lacking appropriate space and inadequate maintenance.

Additionally, the use of green building products and design features

minimize energy use and lower the low carbon footprint of the building,

161The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

Traugott Terrace goes

beyond the minimal by

providing an exquisitely

beautiful living

environment that

serves as an important

stabilizer for its

residents.

while priority was given to creating accessible communal spaces and

enhancing the quality of interior spaces.

EW also publishes papers and manuals to aid community organizations in

the design process. Executive director Jan Gleason and associate Sally

Knodell wrote Making a Place for Children: A Planning and Design Manual,

which is used by school districts across the state. EW’s white papers on

sustainable design are widely read by both government agencies and for-

profit developers as important guidelines and their distribution significantly

broadens the influence of EW’s community design practice to communities

around the nation.

Organizational Effects: Zoning and Planning Policy

Many neighborhood physical improvements rely on supportive government

structures, community advocacy, and countless hours of research. Often

invisible to the public, the organizational framework underlying the

implementation of new physical infrastructure is critical to community

sustenance. Community design centers that develop such frameworks can

provide critical work to influence the design and organization of

neighborhoods for years to come.

Zoning and planning policy represents a single, yet vital, way in which the work

of community design centers can have a lasting influence on housing, economic

development, landscape planning, regional growth, and the overall livability of

communities. As a system of land-use regulation, zoning laws provide the

basis for future neighborhood design and community planning. Successful

planning can be nearly impossible without zoning guidelines that are

appropriately matched to the needs and goals of a community.

Consequently, a CDC that is able to influence zoning and planning policy is

presciently situated to contribute to long-term changes. To that end, the

Pratt Institute Center for Community Development (PICCD), established in

1963, is an exemplary model to emulate.

PICCD began as an advocacy planning and technical assistance organization

based in the planning department of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. As the

oldest university-based community design center, PICCD represents a

wealth of research, advocacy, and collaboration, which has had a significant

impact on planning policy in New York City neighborhoods since its

162The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

Zoning and planning

policy represents a

single, yet vital, way in

which the work of

community design

centers can have a

lasting influence on

housing, economic

development, landscape

planning, regional

growth, and the overall

livability of

communities.

inception. Focusing on policy, zoning, and financing in relation to affordable

housing, neighborhood infrastructure, new economic opportunities,

accountable development, and transportation equity, PICCD conducts in-

depth research and analysis, which is then widely distributed as white

papers and reports read by planning professionals, community advocacy

organizations, and local politicians. PICCD’s proactive involvement in

developing planning strategies and policy for the city has led to the

recognition of PICCD as specialists in New York City planning, while also

giving it a respected voice in wider urban planning circles.

Over the course of more than three decades, PICCD has worked with

community organizations in both the Greenpoint and Williamsburg

neighborhoods in Brooklyn, moving toward a more equitable distribution of

jobs, affordable housing, and open space in the Greenpoint-Williamsburg

area. When New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced plans in

2003 to rezone more than twenty New York City neighborhoods, residents

of Williamsburg and Greenpoint already had decades of experience in

community organizing, collaboration, and advocacy behind them. This

allowed them to effectively engage with and challenge the new rezoning

proposal. Through critical engagement with the New York City Department

of Planning, collaboration with community groups, and the political

organizing undertaken by scores of grassroots community organizations,

PICCD and the residents of Williamsburg and Greenpoint were able to

influence the proposed rezoning of this 175-block area. By proposing a list

of critical recommendations to the City—largely focused around the

development and sustenance of affordable housing units and ensuring that

the new rezoning proposal responded to community needs—like

recommendations due largely to the extensive research conducted by

PICCD – inclusionary zoning provisions, as well as affordable housing

prevailing living wages and health benefits for building-service workers, the

preservation of existing affordable units and the use of public lands for

additional affordable housing units, were approved for the neighborhood in

the new Greenpoint-Williamsburg Land Use and Waterfront Plan.

Ultimately, the approved plan allowed the benefits emerging from sustained

growth to be equitably distributed across the community. Additionally, what

163The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

began as a local effort by PICCD and others for inclusionary zoning has

now spread to other communities and is part of a citywide effort to

mandate inclusionary zoning. Thus the work of PICCD in Greenpoint-

Williamsburg provides an important precedent for community

development occurring elsewhere in New York, allowing PICCD’s research,

testimony, and reports to service a much broader population than for

which they were originally intended.

Economic Effects: Funding the Community

As nonprofit organizations, many community design centers rely on grants

and loans from foundations, government agencies, and individual donors to

support their work. Unlike for-profit design ventures, CDCs face the dual

difficulty of aiding individuals and organizations in need while simultaneously

seeking charitable funding from others. The financial strains on a CDC can be

great, especially when community design centers seek to at least partially

relieve the financial strains burdening the communities in which they work.

Many CDCs have approached this financial difficulty as a challenge,

however, and have developed creative solutions to fundraising by situating

their own centers as economic forces within communities. As active

participants in the local economy, CDCs can greatly influence the economic

standing of neighborhoods by providing jobs, technical assistance, and home

repair loans. Further, as smaller-scale lenders and grant makers, CDCs can

build a tighter and more localized sense of community with their clients by

ensuring that the recipients of funds are also receiving the appropriate

design, technical, and planning expertise necessary to implement their

project. Thus, CDCs involved in funding community projects are in a unique

position to both ensure the long-term viability of projects and to

contribute to the equitable distribution of funds to both organizations and

individuals in need.

ASSIST, Inc. was founded in 1969 as a nonprofit community design center

in Salt Lake City, providing architectural design, community planning, and

development assistance to organizations, as well as accessibility design

planning and assistance to low-income households and people with

disabilities. ASSIST offers zero-interest loans to qualifying low-income

homeowners and home buyers. No monthly payment is required for the

loans, and no interest is charged on the money borrowed. Loans are

164The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

The financial strains on

a CDC can be great,

especially when

community design

centers seek to at least

partially relieve the

financial strains

burdening the

communities in which

they work.

granted to make critical repairs on homes; eligibility for the loans is

determined by a minimum income requirement and adequate home equity

to cover the cost of the loan. The money borrowed is due only when the

property is sold or transferred, which allows many low-income families to

make much-needed repairs on their homes, particularly in situations when

they are unable to receive traditional bank loans. By situating itself as a non-

traditional lender within struggling communities in Utah, ASSIST addresses

an often-neglected gap in community building. While design centers usually

provide design services and even technical assistance for new construction

and for renovation, the effect of the design center will be greatly limited if

the client cannot afford construction, or is unclear on how to procure

funding for renovation work. Understanding that a community design

center can play such a role, beyond the design of physical structures,

enables CDCs like ASSIST to further influence the long-term sustainability

of communities.

Accordingly, in recent years, many community design centers have begun to

approach project funding as a necessary component of services offered to

community-based organizations. In Seattle, environmental WORKS recently

established Sustaining Affordable Communities, a grant-making initiative

geared toward providing sustainable design assistance to nonprofit

organizations and affordable housing developers. In Yonkers, New York, the

Greystone Foundation, a nonprofit community developer, operates the

Greystone Bakery, a for-profit business that generates funds for the

foundation. The bakery employs members of the community and serves as

an unofficial community center. The Greystone Bakery is envisioned as a

critical component of the foundation’s work to provide economic

sustenance for the community, which is evidenced in their double bottom

line: “We don’t hire people to make brownies, we make brownies in order

to hire people.”

Sociocultural Effects: Building Community

With new building construction and renovations, proper zoning and

planning policies put in place, and adequate funding resources for

development projects, revitalized communities often witness a resurgence

in social and cultural resources. While the architectural, landscape, and

165The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

planning work of community design centers can shape the social health of

communities, design centers can also more directly participate in social

issues. Through the localized efforts of community design, CDCs often build

long-term and trusting relationships with advocacy groups and community

members. Thus, with the trust built through years and even decades of

difficult but successful work, community design centers can branch out

beyond physical design and planning imperatives to address social and

cultural issues relevant to the communities in which they are working.

Asian Neighborhood Design (AND) was established in San Francisco in

1972 as an effort to bring design to ailing communities. Today, AND sees its

mission as centered on building supportive relationships to help move

people out of poverty and toward self-sufficiency. Toward that end, AND

incorporates a range of programs beyond traditional architectural design

and community planning services in achieving their organizational goals. In

1982, AND began an employment program to train low-income youth and

young adults in carpentry, cabinet making, computer-aided design, drafting,

drywall installation, masonry, and plumbing. In addition to providing the skills

necessary for work in the construction field, the Employment Training

Center also provides remedial education and GED preparation, as well as

instruction in math, history, financial literacy, life skills, and conflict resolution.

Serving primarily African-American and Latino youth and young adults, the

program aims to counter obstacles faced by these young people by helping

them develop skills necessary for success in life. AND’s work to establish

educational opportunities for these youth, aligned with the design and

community planning work that AND already engages in, suggests that

CDCs can facilitate a natural correlation between design and social

sustainability. This level of social engagement not only builds stronger

communities, but it also contributes to greater levels of trust and

recognition between the community design center and the neighborhood

residents. Another, slightly different but no less effective, example would be

the work of the Design Coalition, Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin.

Established in 1972, Design Coalition, Inc. focuses on socially conscious

design as a form of community activism. Design Coalition projects

emphasize community viability and social networks, primarily through the

design of cohousing, a resident-developed cooperative community

166The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

combining individual dwelling units with communal spaces. The individual

dwelling units are usually structured around a common unit containing

communal facilities for cooking, playing, dining, gathering, and laundry.

Communal facilities can also contain guest rooms, workshops and storage

areas. Residents in cohousing developments often dine together in the

common unit, even though they may have their own individual kitchens.

Additionally, they may even carpool, buy food in bulk together, and arrange

for collective childcare. Design Coalition encourages and supports

cohousing developments by providing workshops for individuals and groups

interested in pursuing them. Design Coalition also provides guidelines for

establishing a cohousing group, developing a budget, and beginning the

design process. By providing services to aid in such development, Design

Coalition helps communities realize their goals for positive forms of living,

while disseminating information about alternative living arrangements and

emphasizing the importance of social networks and structures in sustaining

communities.

Conclusion

The work of community design centers broaden the scope of architectural

practice by recognizing the necessity of civic engagement in design and by

developing both the strategies and tactics necessary for implementing

successful design processes. For years, social justice advocates and

community activists have addressed issues of inadequate affordable housing,

lack of public space, and inequities in access to education, public

transportation, and necessary amenities. As design activists, community design

centers have joined community advocates in the struggle for more equitable

conditions for living and working. As shown here, acknowledging the emerging

role of community design as social critique requires recognizing the variety

of ways in which design activism can have long-standing positive effects on

neighborhoods.

Beyond the physical changes prompted by new architectural and landscape

interventions, the organizational, economic, and socio-cultural effects of

CDCs on communities are profound and far-reaching. Organizations and

individuals seeking to establish new community design centers should look

beyond the physical to understand the broad range of options available

167The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

As design activists,

community design

centers have joined

community advocates

in the struggle for

more equitable

conditions for living

and working.

that would allow the newly established CDC to have the maximum

positive impact on local communities. Additionally, through distribution of

literature detailing results from extensive research reports, testimonies, and

community actions, community design centers can begin to extend their

impact beyond the localities in which they work, influencing regional and

even national design-related issues.

Finally, the community design centers discussed here exhibit some similar

approaches to the places where they work, thus amplifying their intended

impact and extending their range of influence. First, design centers with

broad influence tend to focus on the capacities and assets of the community

rather than solely on the needs and deficiencies. The approach of successful

community design centers must be goal-oriented rather than problem-

directed in order for residents to gain a sense of ownership over the

renewal of their communities. Second, CDCs with significant impact on

communities tend to emphasize community-centered processes. Whether

through partnering with other community advocacy organizations, testifying

at city council meetings, or forming new development groups, CDCs build

upon existing community activities as a basis for new initiatives. In rooting

their initiatives in a community-centered process, CDCs ask questions like:

What are the values of the community? What are the values of the city and

its planners? How can the designers and planners interact with the

community in such a way that does not mistake the values and desires of

the designers, funders, and politicians with the actual values and desires of

the residents of the community?

Ultimately, community design centers must exhibit a significant influence on

the communities in which they work in order to be successful in the long

run. Whether that influence is physical, organizational, economic,

sociocultural or, most likely, a combination of some or all of these,

community development cannot proceed without informative

collaboration, networking, and partnerships among community advocates

and neighborhood residents. The influence of community design centers on

society can be extensive, crossing professional and disciplinary boundaries, as

well as neighborhood, city, and regional boundaries. The dissemination of

research, design analyses, and planning strategies by CDCs also feeds into

168The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

The influence of

community design

centers on society can

be extensive, crossing

professional and

disciplinary boundaries,

as well as

neighborhood, city, and

regional boundaries.

Design centers with

broad influence tend to

focus on the capacities

and assets of the

community rather than

solely on the needs and

deficiencies.

the knowledge base of other community design centers. Thus CDCs greatly

influence each other, serving as models for innovative planning, community

organizing, and design aesthetics. As such, the cross-pollination of design-

centered knowledge among community design centers fosters a

broadened community of design professionals looking to one another for

inspiration and ideas, while generating new and innovative design strategies

for further dissemination across the vast field of design and planning

knowledge.

169The Influence of Community Design Centers on Society

Katie Swenson

Reflections

A15

The Enterprise Rose Architectural FellowshipAn Evolving Role for Community Design in Affordable Housing

Numerous architectural treatises have been put forth that imagine a future

in which all people have a beautiful home that not only provides a safe,

stable, enriching environment, but also that is part of a thriving

neighborhood with all the necessary resources of transportation, schools,

health care, and nutritious food. Recent initiatives in the affordable housing

community are attempting to make this designed vision a reality. This

momentum includes the evolving perspective and role of architects,

embodied by the Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, a program that

embedded its first class of Rose Fellows with community developers in

2000. In recent years, programs like the Rose Fellowship that focus on the

professional development of young architects have

• increased awareness of neighborhood-scale civic relationship and

collaboration within the broader profession,

• increased the number of designers interested and working in affordable

housing, and

• produced high-quality housing for communities with the capacity to

thrive beyond the completion of a building.

This bottom-up investment strategy is contributing to market demand for

higher-quality design in affordable housing today, a notable departure from

10 to 15 years ago, when the Rose Fellowship began.

Shaping Skills for Community-Based Design

In 2000, community developers and emerging architects were invited to

apply for the first three-year Rose Architectural Fellowship program,

funded by a grant from Enterprise Community Partners, and named for

Frederick P. Rose. Today more than 50 Rose Fellows have made an impact

171

15.1 This essay is adapted by the author

from her article entitled “Designing

Better Designers: Families First,” which

first appeared in Cityscape: A Journal of

Policy Development and Research,

Volume 16, Number 2, 2014, 103-114.

The Enterprise Rose Architectural FellowshipAn Evolving Role for Community Design in Affordable Housing15.1

Katie Swenson

on communities across the country.15.2 Community development host

organizations hire Rose Fellows to bring the vision and resources of design

to the development team and into the critical path of affordable housing

projects.

Although community developers certainly share a goal to create quality

housing, no stated methodology incorporated design principles into the

development process. Convincing the leadership of community

development organizations to invest in design quality has been a major

challenge in the housing community in recent decades, but the investment

in integrated design has since become a central component in the

community development field. In turn, the demand for professionals to

work in this field calls for architects with a broad set of skills.

In attempting to understand the gaps in the traditional training of

architectural practitioners that the Rose Fellowship and others are filling, it

is helpful to look at key skill sets that have surfaced during the course of

the Rose Fellowship’s existence.

• Community Relationship-building: The ability for designers to develop

community relationships.

• Design Quality: The propensity and capacity to be more innovative in

design, based on both funding constraints and developer

broadmindedness.

• Organizational Changes: The understanding of affordable housing

developers’ organizational practices, and the redefinition their missions

based on design skills.

• Functional Programs: The ability to develop functional programs

tailored for residents and occupants that may not match the traditional

conceptions taught in architectural education.

• Broadening Scale: The scaling of design interventions to incorporate

neighborhoodwide and communitywide considerations beyond a single

development or unit.

172The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.2 “About the Enterprise Rose

Architectural Fellowship,” Enterprise

Community Partners, http://

www.enterprisecommunity.com/

solutions-and-innovation/design-

leadership/rose-architectural-fellowship/

about-the-fellowship.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

In the following sections, specific examples illustrate how these skills

contribute to quality design in affordable housing.

Community Relationships

The Rose Fellowship has shown that when designers enter into a long-

term relationship with a community—and when the lines are blurred

between community member, planner, designer, and advocate for a better

future—the rewards are robust. A member of the first class of Rose

Fellows in 2000, Jamie Blosser, partnered with the Ohkay Owingeh Housing

Authority (OOHA) at Ohkay Owingeh, a Pueblo in northern New Mexico.

To build 40 new units and a community center, OOHA used the 1996

Native American Housing Assistance and Self Determination Act

(NAHASDA) Indian Housing Block Grant and the Rural Housing and

Economic Development grant to leverage five other sources of financing,

including low-income housing tax credits. NAHASDA created an

opportunity for local residents to institute their own vision and make

decisions regarding land use planning. It also created a unique opportunity

for architects, planners, and landscape architects to bring their skills to the

benefit of these communities.15.3

Figure 1. Homes at Tsigo bugeh Village in Ohkay Owingeh, New Mexico

Photo Source: Harry Connolly

173The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.3 Jamie Blosser, Personal

communication (interview with author),

2009.

Since the 1960s, lacking mortgage financing, the Pueblo had typically

received single-family HUD bungalows spread out on suburban lots. The

new development built on the ancient, community-oriented settlement

patterns of the historic plaza and village center, Owe’neh Bupingeh. The

plaza area was once lined with several hundred historic adobe homes

dating back at least 700 years. More than 60 percent of these adobe

homes had fallen into ruin and disrepair by the turn of the 21st century.

During the development process, some tribe members at first had difficulty

with the notion of attached housing, having become accustomed to single-

family homes, but tribal elders began to tell stories of what life was like

growing up on the plaza before it had fallen into disrepair. The new project

at Ohkay Owingeh, called Tsigo bugeh Village, was designed to set a

standard for incorporating community-driven, culturally significant design

into all aspects of the planning, and its success set a new precedent for the

tribal council.15.4

Design Quality

Relationships between designers and communities consequently also yield

better design. In Los Angeles, Rose Fellow Theresa Hwang partnered with

Skid Row Housing Trust (SRHT), to work on housing and empowerment

for formerly homeless individuals through better-designed housing, resident

engagement, and social services.15.5 Supportive housing has been a recent

innovation in the housing sector, based on the realization that providing

housing alone is not enough. Housing providers have found that

incorporating social services and medical care into their buildings creates

better success rates for residents, especially chronically homeless individuals

or those with addictions or disabilities. Supportive housing models typically

have two legs: (1) the permanent apartment unit, and (2) the social

services, including physical and mental health care.

With the creation of Hwang’s main project, the Star Apartments, SRHT and

its partner Michael Maltzan Architecture pushed this model to include a

third leg: nonclinical therapeutic amenities such as yoga, basketball,

gardening, and art classes. Star Apartments provides more than 15,000

square feet of community space with amenities that contribute to the

integrated approach to resident support.15.6 For SRHT, design goes beyond

174

15.4 For additional information, see

Tomasita Duran, “Tsigo bugeh Village,”

Honoring Nations symposium, Harvard

Project on American Indian Economic

Development, John F. Kennedy School

of Government, Harvard University.

Cambridge, Massachusetts: September

17, 2009. Presentation.

https://nnidatabase.org/video/honoring-

nations-tomasita-duran-tsigo-bugeh-

village.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.5 “Rose Fellowship: Theresa Hwang,

Hosted by Skid Row Housing Trust, Los

Angeles, California,” Enterprise

Community Partners, http://

www.enterprisecommunity.com/

solutions-and-innovation/design-

leadership/rose-architectural-fellowship/

fellows/theresa-hwang.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.6 Robbie Couch, “New Skid Row

HomelessApartment Complex Has a

Running Track and Art Studio,”

Huffington Post, October 13, 2014,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

2014/10/10/star-apartments-los-

angeles_n_5961558.html.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

aesthetics to enhance programs and building functions. The building and the

overall living environment have a significant effect on the rehabilitation

process and the challenge of ending homelessness.15.7

Figure 2. Star Apartments in Los Angeles

Photo Source: Skid Row Housing Trust

SRHT initiated a participatory design process during the early development

stages. The team brought in residents, social workers, and maintenance staff

from its existing housing portfolio, collecting feedback on which building

features worked and which did not. This process directly informed the

spatial layout, incorporating what residents actually wanted rather than

assuming what they needed. In her nearly 5 years working with SRHT,

175The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.7 Ibid..

Hwang has developed a community engagement model based on trusting

relationships with residents, staff, and the design and development team.15.8

Organizational Changes

In the early days of the Rose Fellowship, only a few affordable housing

developers were thinking about green building. In 2001, Rose Fellow Colin

Arnold was working with Community Housing Partners (CHP), one of few

groups to see the potential for sustainability to reshape its organization.15.9

CHP’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Janaka Casper, has grown the

organization exponentially during the past 13 years; Casper now manages a

portfolio of more than 6,000 units.15.10 When CHP brought on Arnold, it set

about using the concepts of sustainability to affect every aspect of its

business, from construction to accounting. Arnold pushed CHP to build to

a high green standard and constructed a LEED Silver-certified boys home

in 2003, which became both a symbol and a learning laboratory for

research.15.11

Figure 3. Tekoa Boys Home in Christiansburg, Virginia

Photo Source: Alan Scherry

176The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.8 Ibid..

15.9 “Responsibility,” Community

Housing Partnership, https://

www.communityhousingpartners.org/

79/responsibility.html.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.10 About CHP,” Community Housing

Partnership, https://

www.communityhousingpartners.org/

55/about-chp.html.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.11 Melissa Byrd and James Ruhland,

The Tekoa Boys' Home: A Melding of

Vision, Functionality, and Sustainability,”

Journal of Green Building: Summer

2011, Vol. 6, No. 3, 33-45.

doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3992/jgb.6.3.33

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

Casper said to a crowd of about 300 people at a Housing Assistance

Council meeting that the “Rose Fellowship was the single most

transformative program that CHP has ever experienced.”15.12 The Rose

Fellowship gave the organization a method and the resources to deepen its

commitment to sustainability over time. Arnold is still with CHP 13 years

later, now leading the design division of the CDC, with four architects on

staff. Whereas most CDCs contract out their architecture and design

services, CHP not only has the design function in house, it uses its

expertise in designing green affordable housing to serve as consultant for

other housing groups.15.13

Functional Programs

The development of a program is common to professional practice, yet it is

often one that is not considered thoughtfully and reflectively—a critical

omission when considering communities. In Roxbury, Massachusetts, Rose

Fellow Mark Matel has used a community arts approach to formal

programming, not only to revitalize a former bus yard site, but also to

reenergize a neighborhood around expressing its own creativity and

positivity.15.14 Living in a neighborhood with terrible crime and poverty

statistics, residents of Roxbury view affordable housing development with

skepticism. Some say that the neighborhood already has too much

affordable housing; others say that the neighborhood is being gentrified.

Matel has been living in the midst of this debate, hearing all sides and

getting to know the complexities—and personalities—in the neighborhood.

He suggested taking an alternative approach from which everyone in the

neighborhood could ideally benefit, investing and celebrating all the positive

qualities of the people and culture of Roxbury.

In May 2013, Matel and his colleagues invited 85 local artists to spray paint

garage doors. The event drew more than 1,000 people to the bus yard site

that had been fenced off for 20 years, energizing it first with art and not

long after with music, dancing, food trucks, and ice cream vendors.15.15 The

electricity of that day led Mark and the organizers to create “Bartlett

Events,” which offered a structure through which community members

could stage their own events on the site. Roxbury still plans for 323 units of

housing plus retail, parking, open space, and so on. Now, however, thanks to

177The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.15 Yvonne Abraham, “Let’s Open the

Door to Arts in Boston,” Boston Globe,

August 29, 2013, http://

www.bostonglobe.com/metro/

2013/08/28/let-open-door-arts-boston/

BNOCk7n4UUJuHBfA20ThrM/

story.html

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.12 Swenson, “Designing Better

Designers,” 111..

15.13 “CHP Design Studio,” Community

Housing Partnership, https://

www.communityhousingpartners.org/

401/chp-design-studio.html.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.14 “Mark Matel, Hosted by Nuestra

Comunidad Development

Corporation,” Enterprise Community

Partners, http://

www.enterprisecommunity.com/

solutions-and-innovation/design-

leadership/rose-architectural-fellowship/

fellows/mark-matel.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

the energy of Matel and his colleagues, the proposed development is

envisioning an identity that is attracting people who want to animate this

formerly derelict site into a creative community that looks to the

neighborhood culture as a source of inspiration.15.16

Figure 4. Bartlett Events in Roxbury, Massachusetts

Photo Source: Mark Matel

Broadening Scale

Early in its history, Enterprise Community Partners was aware of the broad

scope of issues associated with any one housing development. Founder Jim

Rouse recognized that “decent, affordable” housing is a fundamental

platform for a successful life, but he knew that housing alone was not

enough and needs a place within a thriving, uplifting neighborhood.15.17 The

Rose Fellowship exposes young professionals to the larger challenges and

aspirations of communities. Some of the most exciting design work is going

on in neighborhoods where CDCs are investing deeply in green

infrastructure at the neighborhood scale, intentionally directing benefits

toward low-income residents.

178The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.16 Patrick Rosso, “Plans filed,

community meeting set for Bartlett Yard

project in Roxbury,” Boston.com, March

6, 2013, http://www.boston.com/

yourtown/news/roxbury/2013/03/

hold_plans_filed_and_community.html.

(Accessed January 9, 2015)

15.17 Swenson, “Designing Better

Designers,” 114.

A few miles from Matel’s work in Roxbury, Rose Fellow Mike Chavez is

working with three ambitious CDCs that have joined in a collaborative

effort to revitalize a transit corridor in Dorchester. Close to the center of

Boston, this neighborhood had a commuter rail line running through it that,

until recently, made no local stops. Community organizing led the three

CDCs and many others to unite and successfully advocate for new stops in

their neighborhoods. Today, four stops are open and three are in process,

and the successful advocacy campaign gave neighbors in the Talbot-Norfolk

Triangle an organizing framework. CDCs are taking bold steps to ensure

that residents will not only have a better quality of life, but also that they

will retain their neighborhood fabric, identity, and commitment to the

mutual empowerment of themselves and their neighbors.15.18

Conclusion: Envisioning a New Architecture Practice

Housing designed by professional designers with the guidance and

imperatives of the community can become an architecture that speaks to

the past, present, and future of a community. As demonstrated by the Rose

Fellowship, housing is designed not only to achieve the highest

environmental sustainability standards, but also to reflect the entire

community in question. To design good housing—housing that has a holistic,

collaborative, and place-based design approach—and to achieve better

health and an improved quality of life for residents, architects must address

broad community needs and integrate transit infrastructure, energy

efficiency, food access, and economic opportunity. Affordable housing

design and construction can evolve when affordable housing designers and

developers have evolved, to see the part and the whole, the individual and

the community, the house and the neighborhood, and the past and the

future.

179The Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship

15.18 Swenson, “Designing Better

Designers,” 114-115.

Thomas A. Dutton

Reflections

A16

Engaging the School of Social LifeA Pedagogy Against Oppression

If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty

one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the

darkness

Victor Hugo16.1

Introduction

In fall 2006, Miami University’s Center for Community Engagement in Over-

the-Rhine, with great excitement and some trepidation, inaugurated a

flagship initiative, the Over-the-Rhine Residency Program, in collaboration with

leaders and organizations of that Cincinnati neighborhood. A highly

contested neighborhood in transition, marked by extremes of gentrification

and homelessness, upscale commercial development, and few

neighborhood-serving businesses for poor residents, Over-the-Rhine had

been the focus of an alliance of corporate and municipal forces pushing

market-based initiatives, while a poor people’s movement resisted that

alliance, calling for fairness and equality amidst these extremes for decades.

The Residency Program became possible only through the relationships

built between the neighborhood and university since 1981, when I began

working with community groups. Relationships deepened in 1996 with the

beginning of the architectural Design/Build Studio and Agit-Prop

installations. In 2001, after more than five years of increasing police activity

and assertions of police brutality and racial profiling in Over-the-Rhine, the

shooting death of an unarmed 19-year-old man by police led to four days

of violent civil disturbances in the neighborhood. This was a pivotal

evolution in the relationship between the Center and Over-the-Rhine: soon

thereafter, students urged more substantial university engagement and a

deeper understanding of neighborhood conditions, which led to the

Center’s founding in 2002 and the Residency Program in 2006.

181

16.1 Victor Hugo, quoted in Martin

Luther King, Jr., The Trumpet of

Conscience (Boston: Beacon Press,

1967), 8.

Engaging the School of Social LifeA Pedagogy Against Oppression

Thomas A. Dutton

Our time-honored

commitment to one

neighborhood has

enabled us to tap into

collective actions

toward self and social

empowerment among

those most unserved

by the current political

economy, residents

who’ve fallen below

the reach of the

market.

The Residency Program exemplifies the Center’s core mission to work

collaboratively with neighborhood organizations and residents—through

courses, research, and service—to assist residents with efforts already in

motion to develop the community equitably without displacement.

The Residency Program’s approach to community engagement

distinguishes itself from programs based on charity or noblesse oblige.

Indeed, such practices are not even possible on our part, precisely because

our community partner organizations—organized around social justice and

human rights—would never allow it. Such is the sophistication of our

community partners and the demands they can put on us, because of the

deep roots we have been able to establish over a long period of time. Our

time-honored commitment to one neighborhood has enabled us to tap into

collective actions toward self and social empowerment among those most

unserved by the current political economy, residents who’ve fallen below the

reach of the market.

Trusting, enduring relationships that resist noblesse oblige and demand

reciprocity do not automatically result by students simply living in the

community, even for a full semester. Although necessary, residency alone is

not sufficient. The Residency Program is an integrated package. In addition

to a full-time living experience in the “school of social life,” students in the

Residency Program do volunteer service, work on activist community

campaigns, meet weekly for journal writing and reflection, perform service-

learning within organizations associated with their majors, gather weekly

for potluck dinners with invited neighbors, and take a full course load of 15

credit hours. The courses, often team-taught by faculty and community

members, deepen students’ analyses of the political-economic conditions

they directly experience.16.2

The Center and the Residency Program continue to learn and evolve

through the community-based relationships that nurture us. This practice-

rich environment has sharpened our theory of community engagement: that

social change happens when people with wealth and privilege learn to cross

borders, and engage with people in poverty in an honest way. The work of the

Center for Community Engagement is powerful and effective because it

immerses students and faculty in a new setting, complemented by readings,

182Engaging the School of Social Life

16.2 Four courses comprise the

curriculum of the Residency Program.

The first is The Theory and Practice of

Service Learning. This course is now

taught by Jenn Summers, a person with

a long history in Over-the-Rhine who is

currently the executive director of the

Peaslee Neighborhood Center. The

second course is ARC 427, The American

City Since 1940, team-taught by myself

and Bonnie Neumeier, a long-term

resident, activist, co-founder of many of

the neighborhood organizations within

which the students work, and

Community Liaison to the Center for

Community Engagement. The third

course is ENG/ARC 405 Designing and

Writing for Social Change, team-taught by

myself and English professor

Christopher Wilkey of Northern

Kentucky University. The last course is a

Community Engagement Practicum.

Social change happens

when people with

wealth and privilege

learn to cross borders,

and engage with people

in poverty in an honest

way.

seminars, reflection, community campaigns, and service. The Residency

Program is not a service model. It is a fully embodied pedagogical, curricular,

and scholarship model that engages community rather than being content

with "community service." This model challenges students to move from a

base of service to engagement and activism.

When students do this, they are changed through the relationships they

make with people and organizations of Over-the-Rhine. They are changed

because the stories they heard before coming to Over-the-Rhine do not

match up with the stories they come to live. In that first semester of 2006,

of those twelve students who were from mostly upper-middle-class

suburban and small-town backgrounds, six were architecture/interior design

majors16.3 who spent up to thirty hours per week renovating an apartment

unit for Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, an affordable housing

development corporation with a long history of serving low-income need

in the neighborhood. Students from other majors spent equal time working

in neighborhood organizations that serve youth, children, people

experiencing homelessness, and the elderly. Student teachers taught full

time in a neighborhood elementary school.16.4 Community residents were

part of the Program’s administrative and teaching team.16.5

The Over-the-Rhine Residency Program feeds back into and deepens the

community-based work of the Center for Community Engagement in powerful

ways.16.6 Throughout our work, a tension is always present between the

often-conflicting expectations and challenges of the Center’s two homes:

the university and the community. These two contexts certainly have their

own dynamics and they can be startling in their contrasts. Miami University

is mostly a space of privilege, white and wealthy, and Over-the-Rhine is

mostly disadvantaged, black and poor (though this is changing rapidly).

Those are obvious differences, but there are others, often subtle, that can

stress community/university relations. For example, the university is a space

that accentuates research, analysis, and critique, and is less about effecting

action; whereas Over-the-Rhine acknowledges the former but must engage

in action in order to even exist as a place. The conceit of a university is that

it sees itself as the primary site in society for producing knowledge—it

spends much time policing disciplinary boundaries and ensuring research

standards and credentials to this end—and can turn a blind eye to that

183Engaging the School of Social Life

16.3 Other students came from

psychology, philosophy, teacher

education, family studies, and social

work, geography, and interdisciplinary

studies.

16.4 For example, they worked with

people experiencing homelessness at

the Drop Inn Center (the second

largest homeless shelter in Ohio),

children and youth of the Peaslee

Neighborhood Center and the Emanuel

Community Center, tenants of Over-

the-Rhine Community Housing, and

adult women of the Sarah Center who

make jewelry and stitch quilts as

entrepreneurial activities, to name a few.

The teacher education major worked

full-time as a student teacher at

Washington Park Elementary School.

16.5 In particular, Bonnie Neumeier was

responsible for the students’ orientation,

weekly reflective conversations, and

journal writing, and their involvement in

community-based campaigns.

16.6 The Over-the-Rhine Residency

Program completed its eighth iteration

in fall 2013. The Program continues to

attract students from all majors,

including business. In addition to the fall

program, we also conduct a six-week

Over-the-Rhine Summer Residency

Design/Build experience. And then in

Spring 2010 we initiated what we call

the Atelier, which is explained later in

the text.

This model challenges

students to move from

a base of service to

engagement and

activism.

knowledge produced within communities, especially poverty-stricken ones.

What Over-the-Rhine may demand of the Center and what the university may

or may not feel comfortable with are always in flux.

The University and the Center for Community Engagement

The Center’s relationship with the university ushers forth the following

questions: How does the Residency Program affect the discourse in the

university with regards to community outreach and service learning? What

does the Program put on the table as a particular kind of social practice of

the university? What kinds of new theoretical insights about these practices

emerge within the university as a result of the Residency Program and the

Center’s engagement with Over-the-Rhine more widely?

Service-learning programs have grown exponentially in universities and

colleges since the term was coined in 1967. According to the 2007 report

Linking Colleges to Universities by the Democracy Collaborative of the

University of Maryland, “from 1998 to 2004 alone, the percentage of

students who took service learning courses increased from 10 to 30

percent.”16.7 Is this automatically a good thing? “As service-learning grew in

the late 1960s and early 1970s, it developed a strong anti-poverty cast,”16.8

casting students as “foot soldiers in the war on poverty…and other efforts

to further address social problems.”16.9 This changed with the election of

Ronald Reagan, who ended federal support for ACTION and the National

Center for Service Learning, a move that transformed the service-learning

movement to make it more academically based and politically “safe.” As

service learning has transformed from a “type of anti-poverty ‘program’ to a

pedagogical method emphasizing students’ academic learning,”16.10 it is now

more conservative and based in therapy and philanthropy as the

motivators for student action. Universities now airbrush themselves as

“Engaged Universities,” while more and more students become active in

communities, but because that engagement remains mostly at the level of basic

service and volunteerism, universities can play it safe. The status quo remains

unchallenged.

In this historical time where university administrators seem to be more

beholden to their wealthier alumni and moneyed interests, the capacity to

184Engaging the School of Social Life

16.7 Democracy Collaborative at the

University of Maryland. Linking Colleges

to Communities: Engaging the University

for Community Development (University

of Maryland, 2007), 51. http://

democracycollaborative.org/content/

linking-colleges-communities-engaging-

university-community-development.

(Accessed December 15, 2014)

16.9 Michael Loundsby and Michael and

Seth Pollack. Institutionalizing Civic

Engagement: Shifting Logics and the

Cultural Repackaging of Service Learning

in Higher Education (Ithaca, New York:

Cornell University, 2001), quoted in

Linking Colleges to Communities, 51.

16.8 Ibid.

16.10 Democracy Collaborative, Linking

Colleges to Communities, 52.

What Over-the-Rhine

may demand of the

Center and what the

university may or may

not feel comfortable

with are always in flux.

enable service-learning programs that are more politically progressive is a

serious question to ponder.16.11 Not all service-learning programs need to

be such, but for those programs where students engage controversial

subjects in highly visible ways, this may bring attention to the university in

ways administrators want to avoid.

While the political mission of service-learning programs is an important

question in light of those programs becoming more mainstream in

universities, it is equally important to ask to what extent is service learning

still really more about the university than the community. To what extent

are service-learning experiences more about meeting the academy’s needs

than about deciding collaboratively with a community’s leadership as to

how a community-university partnership may take form to assist

community struggles already in motion? Today it is common to hear within

the academy phrases such as “scholarship for the public good,” “public

culture,” the “public value of scholarship,” “the democratic compact,” and so

on, all of which exemplify the goal “to initiate democratic experiences

based on university values of scholarship, academic discovery, and artistic

pursuit.”16.12 Though much of this public scholarship discourse sounds very

good, there is a troubling bias. Terms like democracy, common welfare, and

human dignity are peppered throughout this discourse, but they are not

enough to stave off the colonialist undertones that are at work here: The

quest of the university is to “initiate” democratic practices, or “bring” them

to communities, or “impart” them, or “apply” them. Communities in this

discourse are too often positioned as deficient, as places in need of

treatment that can use a hefty dose of university-medicine. This one-

directional discourse—from the university to the community—ignores the

fact that universities have much to learn from communities that are already

producing knowledge and struggling to enact democratic practices based upon

that knowledge.

Taking these questions seriously can enable universities to understand

more critically the array of service-learning models they offer, as well as the

strengths and limits each model allows. The Over-the-Rhine Residency

Program contributes to Miami University’s deeper self-understanding in the

kinds of service-learning experiences it organizes. A full-scale immersion

program is not the same thing as a one-shot volunteering effort on a

185Engaging the School of Social Life

16.11 “What happens to education

when it is treated like a corporation?”

This is a question posed by world,

educational intellectual Henry Giroux in

his “Public Intellectuals Against the

Neoliberal University” posted on Truth-

out.org (originally October 29, 2013).

http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/

19654-public-intellectuals-against-the-

neoliberal-university?

tmpl=component&print=1.

(Accessed March 26, 2014)

Giroux’s account of the changing

university under pressures of

neoliberalism should concern us all: “In

the absence of a democratic vision of

schooling, it is not surprising that some

colleges and university are increasingly

opening their classrooms to corporate

interests, standardizing the curriculum,

instituting top-down governing

structures, and generating courses that

promote entrepreneurial values

unfettered by social concerns or ethical

consequences.” Giroux is not the only

one voicing these kinds of concerns.

16.12 Jeremy Cohen. “A Laboratory for

Public Scholarship and Democracy.”

New Directions for Teaching and

Learning, no. 5 (Spring 2006), 7. http://

www.bk.psu.edu/Documents/

Academics/labcohen.pdf.

(Accessed December 14, 2014)

This...ignores the fact

that universities have

much to learn from

communities that are

already producing

knowledge and

struggling to enact

democratic practices

based upon that

knowledge.

Saturday morning. This is not to disparage volunteer experiences, but to

distinguish the full array of service options a university can provide. Through

a deeper understanding of the spectrum, the strengths and limits of any

service venture can become clearer. For example, the Residency Program

“engages with” a community rather than provides a “service for” one, even

though services are provided. Because the Program spans a full semester it

offers a more substantial way to build relationships and trust, and thereby

resists the mentality, all too pervasive in the academy, that communities

(especially like Over-the-Rhine) are mere laboratories for learning on the

part of students and teachers. Because students don’t just study a

neighborhood but actually become part of it, the Program resists

philanthropy and assists the neighborhood in its struggle to address oppression

and enact its right to self-determination. The mission of the Residency

Program is not quite captured by characterizations that we are helping to

build community, or helping to advance public culture, or even contributing

to the public good. The goal is sharper, explicitly getting students and faculty

to experience the asymmetrical relationships characterized by oppressed

and oppressor populations. Coming to understand the dynamics of such

relationships opens a window for students and faculty to see how class and

racial struggles take specific form in Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati. And

through this investigation of the systemic structures that produce

oppressor/oppressed relationships, the intent is to act upon those

structures and relationships, with the oppressed community.

The role of faculty to consciously align with the oppressed is indispensable,

but faculty are caught up in their own contradiction within university

culture that can pull them away from such relationships. As service-learning

initiatives become more mainstream, as universities promote themselves as

“Engaged Universities,” this is contradicted by the pressures of stricter

standards for tenure and promotion in the more traditional vein of “publish

or perish” in departments and university-wide. Within this contradiction,

too often community engagement is judged by university committees

simply as service, and left at that. Even when community engagement work

on the part of faculty includes research, publication, curricular and

pedagogical development, and even the institution of new programs, the

university’s cultural policing of disciplinary “standards” casts these efforts to

186Engaging the School of Social Life

The Program resists

philanthropy and

assists the

neighborhood in its

struggle to address

oppression and enact

its right to self-

determination.

tertiary status—a distant third after research and teaching. Architecture

programs across the country might have more leeway in these kinds of struggles

in that consistent creative work and practice can lead to tenure, at least at

Miami. Thankfully, national forces and groups such as Imagining America and

Campus Compact, for example, have emerged to deal directly with these

questions and to provide a forum for faculty to present and share their

community-based work and to provide national leverage for it. It remains to

be seen whether the contradiction will eventually resolve itself, but in the

meantime the pressures of traditional research and publication records will

likely dominate.

Over-the-Rhine in Four Narratives

“Like genocide, so econocide”

Alice Skirtz16.13

The Center for Community Engagement’s relationship with its other home

in Over-the-Rhine raises another set of questions: What does the Residency

Program enable as a set of social practices pertinent to a neighborhood like

Over-the-Rhine in light of world, historical conditions characterized by

neoliberal globalization? What does “community-based work” mean today

in a world far more integrative of global and local forces that condition

everyday life, a moment that has produced within the U.S., as historian

Manning Marable says, an African-American community marked by “mass

unemployment, mass incarceration, and mass disenfranchisement?”16.14 This

“New Racial Domain” of America’s political economy constitutes an “ever-

widening circle of social disadvantage, poverty, and civil death.”16.15 Ethel

Long-Scott, editorial board member of Black Commentator and Executive

Director of the Women’s Economic Agenda Project, expresses similar

concerns when she characterizes the “new racism” as stemming from a

“growing polarization of wealth and poverty.”16.16 In this new “harsh global

capitalism,” a “new class of dispossessed” is not only growing in America but

is “discarded and thrown away.” She continues: “We are becoming more of

a police state as this impoverished low-wage and no-wage class is seen as

potentially explosive and must be held in check…Managing and controlling

the new class of dispossessed is the new paradigm of policing and

incarceration.”16.17

187Engaging the School of Social Life

16.13 Alice Skirtz. Econocide: Elimination

of the Urban Poor (Washington D.C.:

NASW Press, 2012).

16.15 Ibid.

16.14 Manning Marable. “The Crisis of

Black Leadership: Building African-

American Political Empowerment—

Past, Present and Future,” Keynote

address delivered 10 November 2007

at the “Second Annual Ongoing

Covenant with Black Iowa Summit.”

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/

10.1080/10999940801937318?

journalCode=usou20#.VI5camTF9Bg.

(Accessed December 14, 2014)

16.16 Ethel Long-Scott. “Justice—It’s in

the Details.” Commentary on “Obama’s

Race Speech” by members of the

Editorial Board of

BlackCommentator.com. http://

blackcommentator.com/

269/269_cover_obama_race_speech_a

nalysis_ed_bd.html.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

16.17 Ibid.

Architecture programs

across the country

might have more

leeway in these kinds

of struggles in that

consistent creative

work and practice can

lead to tenure, at least

at Miami.

Language like Marable’s and Long-Scott’s describes a neighborhood like

Over-the-Rhine nearly perfectly. Located just north of the city’s central

business district, Over-the-Rhine has always been an entry port and a

home for poor migrants from Appalachia and the rural south looking for a

better way of life. It is the city’s poorest district with a median household

income less than $12,000/year (though this figure may be changing with all

the recent upscale development). In 1950, approximately 30,000 people

resided there, with whites constituting greater than 95 percent of that

population. In 2010 the figure was about 7,500, 75 percent black. Recent

estimates have nearly 400 buildings standing vacant. The entire

neighborhood is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was

placed on the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of eleven most

endangered places in 2006. As of 2014, Over-the-Rhine is experiencing full-

blown, upscale development firing on all cylinders, and the rapidity of that

development has caught everyone by surprise.

First Narrative: Poverty

As a consequence of those extremes of gentrification and homelessness,

two narratives about Over-the-Rhine vie for public attention in Cincinnati.

The first has a long history and is likely what most people imagine when

they think of Over-the-Rhine: Poverty. Here, in this narrative, Over-the-

Rhine’s decline in population and income exemplifies the classic story of

many American inner-city neighborhoods. The media characterize the

neighborhood mostly as deficient or lacking—a territory marked by drugs,

crime, prostitution, emptiness. The neighborhood in this narrative is a

frightening place, wildly out of control, saturated by shootings and

homelessness. This fixation of crime in Cincinnati occupies center stage in

the media and popular mindset, and it means something precise: “It is code

for an urban underclass of blacks and other people of color who are

thought to be so murderous and deviant that through their ‘black-on-black

violence,’ rampant criminality in ‘drug dealing and welfare dependency,’

‘aggressive panhandling,’ their ‘teen pregnancy and prostitution,’ and their

‘family breakdown and school dropout rate,’ they are a menace to the

citizens of Cincinnati.”16.18 This usual recipe of pathology plays out in

commonly heard sayings such as: “No one in their right mind would live

there,” and “if you have to drive through the neighborhood, you better roll

up your windows and lock your doors.”

188Engaging the School of Social Life

16.18 Thomas A. Dutton. “Colony Over-

the-Rhine.” The Black Scholar v. 37, # 3

(Fall 2007), p. 14. For an excellent book

on this topic see, Steve Macek, Urban

Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the

Moral Panic over the City (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

Second Narrative: Urban Renaissance

A new story about Over-the-Rhine is now emerging, invigorated by such

terms as “rebirth” and “urban renaissance.” This is the second narrative, and

it effortlessly supports the city’s welcoming of corporate funding to “bring

new life to a dying community.” New development is occurring in Over-

the-Rhine, nearly all of it market-rate condos and higher-end commercial

establishments attempting to lure new homeowners to the area. The

ideology propelling this “renaissance” blithely assumes—or perhaps does

not even bother to consider whether—upscale development automatically

meets the needs of the neighborhood’s poorer residents.16.19

Third Narrative: The Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement

There is a third narrative, but the typical Cincinnatian would never know it,

as it is completely erased by the first two. This is the story of the Over-the-

Rhine People’s Movement—the 40+-year history of a coalition of

neighborhood groups that formed to confront injustices and human rights

violations, and is based in affordable housing development, social service,

religion, welfare rights, and community arts and education. The

organizations here that are our community partners include Over-the-

Rhine Community Housing, Peaslee Neighborhood Center,16.20 Drop Inn

Center, the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, and the Contact

Center.

The People’s Movement continues to be a consistent voice for people on

low and moderate incomes. It would be too simple to characterize its

mission as “community-based work.” It is trying to do much more. As the

People’s Movement fights against the gentrification of land and for

affordable housing and services for people without homes as its primary

struggle, it also questions the privatization of the public realm: The state’s

alignment with corporate capital, the militarization of society in the form of

expanding police forces, and the prison-industrial complex, as well as the

production of ideological conditions that promote responsibility only to

“the market,” rather than to neighbors or fellow residents of the city. After

fighting decades of disinvestment on the one hand and recent gentrification

and displacement on the other, the People’s Movement is having difficulty

sustaining its organizing activities. Many of the organizations that started out

189Engaging the School of Social Life

16.19 The intellectual sloppiness of this

conflation is more than a little

aggravating. Many residents feel they are

now strangers in their own

neighborhood. And the research bears

this out, that as urban neighborhoods

experience what is joyfully referred to

as “economic mix” and “mixed-income

development,” animosity on the part of

the newcomers towards their poorer

neighbors increases. See James Fraser,

Ashley Burns, and Deirdre Oakley,

“HOPE VI, Colonization, and the

Production of Difference,” Urban Affairs

Review XX(X) (2012). Also see James

Fraser, Robert Chaskin, and Joshua

Bazuin, “Making Mixed-Income

Neighborhoods Work for Low-Income

Households,” Cityscape: A Journal of

Policy Development and Research, V. 15,

no. 2, 2013.

16.20 For the story of the Peaslee

Neighborhood Center, see Bonnie

Neumeier, “Expression is the First Step

Out of Oppression: Building Grassroots

Capacity for Local Education at

Cincinnati’s Peaslee Neighborhood

Center,” in Peter Senge, et al Schools

That Learn, 2nd Edition (New York:

Random House, 2012).

in activism have transitioned into being middle-aged institutions, relying

more on the nonprofit sector and philanthropic systems just to survive,

thereby diverting “energy from organizing to social service delivery and

program development.”16.21

The narratives of Poverty and Renaissance are quite effective in erasing the

People’s Movement from history. They do this in different ways, of course,

but the result is precisely the same.

Characterized through the Poverty narrative, Over-the-Rhine is an urban

jungle full of monadic people who, if they even have a culture, it would be

that perverse “culture of poverty,” full of chaos and lacking any organization.

The narrative of Renaissance is even more erasing—and arresting. Brilliantly

evoking the changes in Over-the-Rhine that the city/corporate alliance

wants to see, “Renaissance” harkens back to Italy of the “1400s and the so-

called flowering of the new human spirit, marked by the great advances in

art and architecture by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michaelangelo.

What happened before the Renaissance? Doesn’t matter. We call that time

the Dark Ages. Nothing worthy to note really, except maybe the Black

Plague.”16.22

And so it is, in one easy label—Poverty or Renaissance—a whole history of

residents organizing and building institutions—real life—to address deep

social need is bracketed out, except when it is equated to the Plague.

Fourth Narrative: Econocide

There is one more narrative, and it too flies under the radar, but what it

brings to light in urban areas should be of concern to everyone.

For a very long time, Americans have been taught that so-called free

markets are the magic elixir to bring forth an equality of opportunity and

prosperity for all; that cities and states should provide a good business

climate for the unfettered, corporate-dominated economy; that public

assets should be privatized and private operations deregulated to advance

the public good; and that with corporate welfare, we can eliminate social

welfare. The result of all these years of neoliberal policy has been precisely

the opposite: Massive inequality and misery on both the national and world

190Engaging the School of Social Life

16.21 INCITE! Women of Color Against

Violence. The Revolution Will Not Be

Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial

Complex (Cambridge, MA.: South End

Press, 2007), 7.

16.22 Thomas A. Dutton. “Do You Have

A Sign?” Posted on Truth-out.org.

January 15, 2012. http://www.truth-

out.org/do-you-have-sign/1326307220.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

scales; a massive redistribution of wealth upward, as well as unemployment

and underemployment downward for the middle class (and below), as the

country copes with the transition from a production economy to a service-

oriented one; incarceration rates off the charts, with the U.S. becoming

now the most incarcerated nation in the world; life expectancy rates that

do not even make the world’s top 40; infant mortality rates within the

black inner city of Cincinnati as high as 23 deaths per 1,000; and the list

could go on.

No longer is the state the protector of the public realm and the whole

body politic. As one social critic put it, “the idea that government will

guarantee the welfare of all citizens is gone.”16.23 These are the new

conditions of social erasure, where marginalized populations the world

over are being written off and targeted for removal.

It is interesting to note the number of intellectuals, scholars, pundits, and

social critics from all reaches of the globe are grappling with these

conditions, employing terms to capture and qualify the drastic effects of

these conditions—world figures such as Slavoj Zizek, Arundhati Roy, Henry

Giroux, Mike Davis, and Mumia Abu-Jamal, for starters. For example, Zizek

poses the terms “social apartheid,” wherein he sees the most important

social relation in the world today is the one between the “included and

excluded,” where the state “perceives the excluded as a threat and worries

how to keep them at a proper distance.”16.24 Abu-Jamal poses “mentacide:”

“The more black children watch popular culture, the more damage it does.

It creates a kind of mentacide, it destroys their consciousness. [We see] the

obliteration of African American culture in the minds of African American

children so they do not know their history or from whence they come…a

kind of historical genocide.”16.25

But two scholars in particular have caught my attention, each using the

same term: “Econocide.” The first scholar is Arjun Appadurai, who in his

important Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger

coined econocide to name what he saw as the worldwide mobilization of

violence against minorities, immigrants, the poor and homeless, and the

outcast as kind of exorcism to produce certainty and stability on the part

of “majoritarian identities.” For Appadurai, the extent and rapidity of

191Engaging the School of Social Life

16.23 Andrew L. Barlow. Between Fear

and Hope: Globalization and Race in the

United States (Lanham: Rowman and

Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003), 74.

16.24 See Slavoj Zizek, “How to Begin

from the Beginning,” New Left Review 57

(May-June 2009) for an interesting

discussion as to how he thinks the

relation between the included and

excluded constitutes one of the most

important antagonisms not containable

by contemporary capitalism.

16.25 For these quotes by Mumia Abu-

Jamal see Henry Giroux, “The Politics of

Disimagination and the Pathologies of

Power.” Posted on Truth-out.org

(originally February 27, 2013). http://

truth-out.org/news/item/14814-the-

politics-of-disimagination-and-the-

pathologies-of-power

(Accessed March 26, 2015)

Also listen to Eric Mann’s conversation

with Abu-Jamal, “Mumia Abu-Jamal: On

his biggest political influences and the

political ‘mentacide’ of today’s youth,”

Voices From the Frontlines Radio (April

9, 2012).

globalization have produced fearful conditions of anxiety and uncertainty,

with one response being to purge their fear of marginalized populations by

“arranging the disappearance of the losers in the great drama of

globalization.”16.26

The second scholar, Dr. Alice Skirtz, a social worker with extensive

experience in Over-the-Rhine who just two years ago published Econocide:

Elimination of the Urban Poor, says something similar in an account that is no

ideological gloss or polemical rant. In biting detail, Skirtz chronicles how the

city of Cincinnati—through its legislation and the surrendering of its city

functions over to large, corporate entities—has created a class of

“economic others,” thereby positioning poor people as threats to a larger,

more privileged community which then “sets the stage for their exclusion

from the universe of social obligation.”16.27

Econocide is an alarming notion, and my fear is that while it explains daily

life for far too many in urban areas all across the country, it also explains

accurately what passes for urban policy these days. Forget the relation

between “the haves and the have-nots;” now the relation is between “the

haves and those-not-needed-nor-wanted.” Over-the-Rhine is an econocidal

space. And as this plays out in Cincinnati, a city/corporate alliance sanitizes

urban neighborhoods like Over-the-Rhine through militaristic measures

(more police, more sweeps, more punitive legislation, more surveillance

cameras), and an architecture of walls, gates, and barriers comes to mark

the daily experience of those criminalized and excluded. Current residents

come to feel like strangers in their own community, internalizing their

“unwantedness,” all at a time the city claims mixed-income neighborhoods

as the developmental paradigm. Residents too easily slide from helplessness

to hopelessness to nothingness.16.28 Disappearance accomplished.

Such are the world, political-economic conditions evident in Over-the-

Rhine within which the Center for Community Engagement functions.

These kinds of conditions affect many CDCs and Outreach Programs

today, forcing the question: Should not community design centers and

university outreach programs in distressed communities think of their work

explicitly in anti-econocidal terms? What does it mean to enact the

Residency Program in an econocidal neighborhood like Over-the-Rhine?

192Engaging the School of Social Life

16.26 Arjun Appadurai. Fear of Small

Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of

Anger (Durham and London: Duke

University Press, 2006), 41.

16.27 Alice Skirtz. Econocide: Elimination

of the Urban Poor. See also my review

of Skirtz’s book, “Genocide in the

Economic Field.” Posted on Truth-

out.org., October 29, 2013; and

originally published in StreetVibes

(November 9–22, 2012). http://

www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/19683-

urban-cleansing-by-class-the-perfect-

crime.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

16.28 I attribute this insight to

Christopher Kolb. “Nothingness and

Neoliberal Violence in German Plains,

Cincinnati,” which is a chapter from his

Ph.D dissertation in Anthropology, The

Lives of Race and Destiny (Baltimore:

John Hopkins, 2009).

What does it mean to bring mostly white, privileged students into that kind

of context? Conditions evident in Over-the-Rhine today drastically challenge our

understandings of what community means, what democracy means, and even

what social change means. They are conditions that challenge us to think

about how architectural practices and community-university relations might

counter the stealth narrative of econocide.

The Praxis of the Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine

The Miami University Center for Community Engagement has a special

relationship with the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement. Indeed, the

Center would not exist without the blessing and full support of the

People’s Movement, and as such, the Center serves as a unique site for

learning and for producing knowledge that intersects with the needs of that

Movement. We bridge the gap between academic research and the

community organizing taking place in Over-the-Rhine. This demands that

the Center and the Residency Program confront the econocidal, domestic

neocolonial conditions at play in Over-the-Rhine.

Three challenges emanate from the People’s Movement and animate all

that we do in the Residency Program.

The first challenge is: “If you’ve come to help me, don’t waste your time.

But if you’ve come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let

us work together.” This powerful challenge, attributed to Australian artist

and activist Lilla Watson, hangs as a poster above the desk of Bonnie

Neumeier, long-time resident and activist and the Community Liaison with

the Center for Community Engagement. Living up to this challenge reveals

how the language of “help” is not very helpful, because lurking behind such

language are the colonialist assumptions that “to help is to fix.”16.29 What

typically follows from this view is that Over-the-Rhine needs correcting, and

that experts or outsiders or even newcomers already know what the

community needs. In place of “help,” community people offer terms like

assist, support, walk with, “and to see us for the gifts we are.”

The second challenge is: “Expression is the first step out of oppression.”

This is actually the motto of the Peaslee Neighborhood Center, one of our

most important community partners, which will turn 30 years old this year.

193Engaging the School of Social Life

16.29 For a deeper development of the

colonial undertones of “help,” see Peter

Block, Community: The Structure of

Belonging (San Francisco: Berret-Koehler

Publishers, Inc., 2008). And Tania D.

Mitchell, “Traditional vs. Critical Service-

Learning: Engaging the Literature to

Differentiate Two Models,” Michigan

Journal of Community Service Learning

(Spring 2008).

Conditions evident in

Over-the-Rhine today

drastically challenge

our understandings of

what community

means, what

democracy means, and

even what social

change means.

While simple, it is not simplistic. One reading of the motto is the obvious

one—that when the oppressed express themselves, they are then asserting

their agency, their humanity. But a deeper, more powerful reading here links

expression and oppression dialectically, such that expression, when tied to

an analysis of oppression, is the liberating practice. Peaslee’s motto directly

challenges our work to not reproduce models of community engagement

and service based on charity and philanthropy because they fundamentally

fail to challenge students’ self-awareness as to why charity may be needed

in the first place.

And the third challenge is: “Seek out those most vulnerable and oppressed

so that you may learn how to live.” This powerful ethic runs through all the

hearts and minds of social justice organizers in Over-the-Rhine, and

challenges Miami students and faculty to place compassion, forgiveness, and

love at the heart of what we do. It is a very hard ethic to live up to. The

intellectual/theoretical core of the Center for Community Engagement’s

Programs is the work of Paulo Freire, the world-renowned Brazilian educator

who unashamedly placed love at the center of his work. Freire instructs how

love is a commitment to others, and is possible only through the reciprocal

sharing when the self opens up to the Other: “No matter where the

oppressed are found, the act of love is commitment to their cause—the

cause of liberation.”16.30

Developing reciprocal relations based upon an authentic engagement with

others is our primary quest at the Center for Community Engagement. By

directly engaging this divide between self and other, the hope is that all

participants—students, faculty, community members—come to recognize

their own partiality and challenge their own assumptions. They try to

identify the ways privilege and internalized oppression are learning disabilities

that create barriers to achieving a vision of just and equitable communities.

Taking all three challenges seriously shapes our understanding of

community engagement. We have evolved four principal practices to

address these challenges. The Residency Program, because it is a full-time

immersion experience, greatly increases our capacity to collaborate with

the People’s Movement organizations to help define the problems that

obstruct equitable development in Over-the-Rhine—to build community—

194Engaging the School of Social Life

16.30 Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the

Oppressed (New York: The Seabury

Press, 1970): 78.

The intellectual/

theoretical core of the

Center for Community

Engagement’s

Programs is the work

of Paulo Freire, the

world-renowned

Brazilian educator who

unashamedly placed

love at the center of

his work.

Privilege and

internalized oppression

are learning disabilities

that create barriers to

achieving a vision of

just and equitable

communities.

through our four practices of Community Assistance, Community

Advocacy, Agit-Props, and Design/Build. These social/education practices

bring faculty and students from many disciplines to work collaboratively

with neighborhood organizations to effect democratic, equitable

development strategies for people of low incomes, workers, people of

color, and families.

Community Assistance

Through Community Assistance, students in majors other than architecture

spend their community engagement practicum working in neighborhood

organizations of the People’s Movement. They work with people

experiencing homelessness at the Drop Inn Center, with children at the

Peaslee Neighborhood Center, and with the tenants of Over-the-Rhine

Community Housing, to name a few. Teacher education majors work full-

time in neighborhood schools. All students attend various community

meetings, perform community activities, and host weekly dinners with

community guests.

Architecture and interior design students have worked with community

groups through the years to develop urban and housing plans—operating

as a NCARB-recognized community design center to assist groups in

advancing their development efforts. We provide design services only for

nonprofit corporations that work with people who are under-served.

Usually this entails design investigations for low-income housing

rehabilitation. For example, in our first initiative in spring 1998, architecture

students contributed to the successful proposal of Over-the-Rhine Housing

Network to develop forty units in ten buildings (eight rehabs and two of

new construction). The Housing Network was successful in securing Low

Income Housing Tax Credit financing from the State of Ohio for the

development project they titled Sharp Annex. Working in teams, students

measured six buildings to document their as-built conditions, and then

proposed design solutions for their reuse according to state criteria.

Professional architects took the design schematics of the students and

translated them into the construction documents. The first units of Sharp

Annex came on line on February 1, 2000. Final completion was December

2000.

195Engaging the School of Social Life

In spring 2002, the Housing Network asked us again to assist them in their

Low Income Housing Tax Credit Financing application development, this

time for fifteen new units in six existing buildings. Students, again, measured

existing conditions and proposed design solutions that were then more

fully developed by professional architects. Units came on line in 2003.

Students in 2007 worked with Over-the-Rhine Community Housing to

investigate the possibility for a HUD 202 elderly housing scheme in a

building that had been vacant for quite some time. Students documented

the existing building and then developed schematic designs to be included

in the HUD application. The Elm Street Senior Housing project, which

opened in May 2014, is comprised of fifteen units, two community rooms, a

large lobby, an elevator (where none existed before), and an outdoor

garden and courtyard.

In addition to housing design, we have been fortunate to work on initiatives

that explore the potential of vacant commercial storefronts for

neighborhood-serving businesses.

In the spring of 2010 we began an entirely new initiative, the Atelier. This

unique and exciting program was the brainchild of John Blake, the

Community Projects Coordinator of the Center for Community

Engagement, and Graham Kalbli, project manager and designer (formerly)

of CR architecture and design in downtown Cincinnati. Conceived not as a

job or internship or co-op, the program has students in residence in Over-

the-Rhine, working in CR (but not for it), and designing a project for one of

our community-based nonprofits. Atelier is actually a bit of a misnomer as it

implies neophytes learning at the feet of an expert, whereas the impetus of

this collaboration has students (and occasionally recent grads) drive the

project, with professional assistance and oversight all the way through

Design Development. This is in contrast to the conventional co-operative

assignment or internship, in which students look over the shoulder of

experienced professionals. Here CR provides focused project development

guidance in the form of code review, design critiques, specification writing,

and project scheduling. CR provides access to expertise, both in-house and

with consultants, code officials, and product representatives. John Blake,

who works directly with the students, ensures that academic requirements

196Engaging the School of Social Life

are fulfilled, while CR architects Tim Wiley and Rick Fussner ensure that the

project meets professional expectations.

For the students, living in Over-the-Rhine within blocks of project sites

helps to ensure they are in touch with the community and its issues, and

are familiar with the people who will eventually inhabit their designs.

In the first go-around of this collaboration, students tackled a 16,600-

square-foot renovation proposal for a five-story, vacant building with client

Over-the-Rhine Community Housing (OTRCH) to develop 13 affordable

apartment units. Named Beasley Place, in memory of longtime residents

Willie and Fannie Beasley, this $2.9 million project will contain six one-

bedroom units, four two-bedrooms, and three three-bedroom units. The

project will include a new elevator and a common laundry room, as well as

approximately 1,200 square feet of ground-floor commercial space. The

students’ work entailed building documentation, schematic design, and

design development, as well as extensive written applications to the Ohio

Historic Preservation Office for historic tax credits (which were eventually

awarded for over $1 million of the project budget). Construction began in

2014.

Community Advocacy

Community Advocacy entails community-based campaigns and projects

that advance the organizing already in motion. Advocacy work helps

articulate the neighborhood’s position on issues of equitability, capture the

history of the community and the People’s Movement, and broadcast the

desires of the neighborhood to the public at large. Students and faculty

have worked closely with community leaders to further the Oral History

Storytelling Campaign documenting the People’s Movement history;

conducted participatory workshops that produce alternative design

schemes for economically mixed housing and neighborhood parks;

conducted petition campaigns; and assisted neighborhood leaders to

organize marches, meetings, forums, and conversations across different

constituencies. Since 2002, the Center has organized hundreds of forums,

panels, meetings, and conversations in consultation with the community.

These have often been organized around noted speakers such as Dennis

197Engaging the School of Social Life

Kucinich; Bobby Seale, former chairman of the Black Panther Party;

historians Manning Marable and Robin D. G. Kelley; author Barbara

Ehrenreich; Lian Hurst Mann of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in

Los Angeles; consultant Peter Block; Cameron Sinclair of Architecture for

Humanity and Worldchanging; Noah Adams of National Public Radio; many

Cincinnati leaders and activists; and architectural figures such as Mike

Pyatok, Teddy Cruz, Peter Fattinger, and Tom Fisher.

Like an architectural community design center, we have hosted design

charrettes to address design issues at varying scales in Over-the-Rhine. One

of our most significant interventions in this regard happened September

17–19, 2004. Co-sponsored with Architecture for Humanity, Cincinnati

Freedom Summer 2004 Design Charrette for Social Justice linked design

advocacy with organizations of the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement to

address poverty, homelessness, and civil rights.16.31

Design teams explored social questions in a city that in 2001—a year

which saw the urban unrest sparked by the shooting of 19-year-old

Timothy Thomas by a Cincinnati police office—was the flashpoint for

rethinking a reinvigorated civil rights movement.16.32 Participants—nearly 60

in all—examined the history of civil rights and the issues facing Cincinnati

today through representatives of the Cincinnati Black United Front,

Cincinnati Progressive Action, the Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement, and

other groups. Design teams consisted of local citizens, artists, and architects,

as well as students from Miami University, the University of Cincinnati,

Pennsylvania State University, and Harrisburg Community College in

Pennsylvania. Members of Architecture for Humanity came from as far

away as Oakland, CA, St. Louis, Washington DC, Columbus, OH and

Boston. Cameron Sinclair, founder and director of Architecture for

Humanity, flew in from New York City and helped manage the entire

charrette, as well as one of the design teams.

Counter Scheme: Alternative Design for Washington Park

In 2012 Washington Park—an eight-acre park that is one of Cincinnati’s

oldest and that fronts Cincinnati’s Music Hall (1878), home to the city’s

symphony orchestra and opera—reopened to great fanfare and praise.

198Engaging the School of Social Life

16.31 Cincinnati Freedom Summer 2004

coincided with “Voices of Freedom

Summer Reunion Conference,” held at

Miami University also on September 17

– 19. Fifty minutes northwest of

Cincinnati, Oxford, Ohio and the

campus of Miami University (which now

incorporates the Western College

Campus), is the site where the

Freedom Summer participants trained

before traveling to the Deep South to

register voters, participate in Freedom

Schools, and to pressure the U. S.

government to stop the brutality of the

KKK and the local police. 2004 marked

the 40th anniversary of Freedom

Summer.

The Reunion Conference brought

together those whose lives were

changed forever by that Mississippi

summer. Through presentations,

performances, and dialogue, actual

participants from the Summer of 1964

shared their experiences with those

who commemorated the past as a way

to remake the future. Our effort in

Over-the-Rhine and Cincinnati

complemented the Oxford experience,

and people coming to either event had

opportunity to participate in the

activities happening at each site. While

the Miami Reunion was more

commemorative, the Over-the-Rhine

event offered an experience to make

history in light of that commemoration.

16.32 For more on the unrest see my

“Violence in Cincinnati,” The Nation

(June 18, 2001).

Not all were pleased, however. That’s because in 2007 a particularly

focused battle over the future of Washington Park began. This five-year

battle resulted in significant eliminations from the Park’s program that

community residents wanted to see remain in the Park and were highly

valued.

The $48 million makeover of Washington Park was under the control of

the City’s Park Board and a recently formed entity, Cincinnati Center City

Development Corporation, known more as 3CDC. Founded in July 2003

with the city’s blessing (and concurrent with the City of Cincinnati’s shut-

down of its Department of City Planning), 3CDC is a private corporate-

based development group, “created as part of the overall system to

increase effectiveness and efficiency of development activities in the City of

Cincinnati.”16.33 3CDC is no ordinary development group, however. It is the

spearhead of corporate power in Cincinnati as nearly every single Fortune

500 company in Cincinnati has CEO-level representation on its board.

After the Cincinnati Park Board and 3CDC presented a preliminary

scheme for the redesign of Washington Park to the Over-the-Rhine

Community Council in September 2007, residents expressed concern that

the new design lacked the deep-water pool, basketball courts, and other

family-friendly and specifically teen-friendly activities that were already in

the Park; the community had repeatedly requested, in multiple public

meetings, that these features remain. Miami University architecture students

then began working closely with neighborhood residents and leaders to

create an alternative plan that would assist the neighborhood in exercising

a critical voice in the design process. Students from other majors in the

Residency Program simultaneously launched a petition drive to support the

pool and basketball courts, gathering over 400 signatures from people who

lived or worked in Over-the-Rhine.

The students and the community were able to present the Alternative

Design for Washington Park at a public forum held in November 2007, but

this was not by permission of 3CDC or the Park Board. At this standing-

room-only meeting, which lasted nearly three hours, the community

essentially took the meeting over and insisted that its Plan be presented by

the students, which it finally was. Within a week of that forum, Steve Leeper,

199Engaging the School of Social Life

16.33 http://www.3cdc.org/who-we-are/.

(Accessed December 14, 2014)

President and CEO of 3CDC, met with community leaders and the

students. Finally there was a dialogue. Leeper accepted the basketball

courts as part of the new design, but hedged on the deep-water pool,

saying only that a deep-water pool in or near the Washington Park area

was needed and should be accommodated. Somehow over the next five

years both the deep-water pool and basketball courts were dropped from the

brief.

Agit-Props: Resisting Oppression and Exposing the Politics of a Place16.34

In our Agit-Prop practice students work with community artists and

leaders, at their request and guidance, to build artistic installations that

“agitate” and “propagate” points of view regarding the neighborhood’s

history and political consciousness. These installations negotiate a line

between pedagogy and aesthetic practice, posing questions such as: What

learning opportunities can be created by aesthetic interventions conceived

within social movements? What are their critical potential? What role can

cultural production play in helping movements for social change develop

their political strategy and achieve their tactical aims?16.35 Placing art-making

within a strategy of social change articulated by the People’s Movement, the

Agit-Prop work assists the Movement to project its stories and concerns

into the public realm, which encourages new learning on the part of public

audiences. All the Agit-Prop projects evolve through participatory design

processes composed of community leaders and residents, students, and faculty.

Since 1999 we have completed seven such installations, four of them in

exterior settings. Agit-Prop projects create opportunities for community

residents to share stories about their lives and history. Allow me to explain

three of them.

Example 1: Three Photographic Installations

In 2001, Miami students collaborated with local photographer, Jimmy Heath,

at the time a resident of Over-the-Rhine and the “official” photographer of

the People’s Movement. Jimmy saw his black and white compositions of

everyday life in Over-the-Rhine as a “living visual document of the people

and the struggles they face.”16.36 Jimmy ennobles his subjects with a dignity

that counter the hegemonic, media-based representations that all too often

200Engaging the School of Social Life

16.34 For all our Agit-Prop work, see

http://arts.miamioh.edu/cce/

engagement.html.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

16.35 See Thomas A. Dutton and Lian

Hurst Mann. “Affiliated Practices and

Aesthetic Interventions: Remaking

Spaces in Cincinnati and Los Angeles.”

Review of Education/Pedagogy/Cultural

Studies v. 25, #3 (July-September 2003).

The following descriptions of the Agit-

Prop projects were originally published

here.

16.36 Jimmy Heath, Photojournalist.

http://jimmyheath.org.

(Accessed December 14, 2014)

deny their humanity. When hegemony works to its maximum effect, the

poor have difficulty even seeing their own culture because they are locked

into the gaze and language of dominant groups. Jimmy’s work assists people

to discover their agency, principally by holding up a mirror to the many

ways in which his subjects act to transform their reality.

Working collaboratively with Jimmy, students were able to utilize his

photographs in a number of installations that evoked questions pertaining

to gentrification. Jimmy urged the students to push the boundaries of his

own aesthetic practice in order to generate new forms of interpretation.

Hence, the students did not simply build a backdrop for the images.

Utilizing the procedures of collage (adding text and other materials) and

montage (weaving, combining, and actually altering Jimmy’s photographs),

students raised questions about gentrification and the related issues of

displacement and homelessness. The students chose three different sites for

their installation.

The first was a street corner in Over-the-Rhine that the students figured

was sympathetic to Jimmy’s message of hope and struggle. The installation

was up for about a week, and in that time the exhibit was not tampered

with or harmed in any way.

The second site was contested territory in Over-the-Rhine, meaning,

students chose a street corner right in the heart of a gentrifying district. The

plan here too was to erect the installation for about a week. However,

within two hours of being set up, it was torn down and carted off by police

officers, who were obviously called to the scene. Of course we can never

know precisely why this happened, but the students and community

wonder if it has something to do with the challenging message.

The third site was the entry plaza of the student union center at Miami

University. Here the students pressed their peers about gentrification,

asking if they would be the next generation of gentrifiers in communities

like Over-the-Rhine. Though not completely carted off, after a week one

part of the exhibit was trashed. Again, reasons for this are not clear, but we

wonder about people becoming upset with the message.

201Engaging the School of Social Life

Example 2: Remembering the Milner Hotel

Our first Agit-Prop project in spring 2000 commemorated the loss of the

Milner Hotel, a 100-unit, single-room occupancy hotel that since 1944

housed low-income occupants and provided both long-term and

temporary emergency shelter for individuals and families. The hotel was

privately owned and unsubsidized, and often used as quick access

emergency housing by the Mental Health Board, Salvation Army, Red Cross,

and area homeless shelters.

On May 20, 1994, the City of Cincinnati, while advocating that all city

neighborhoods should be comprised of an “economic mix,” demolished the

hotel after it had spent nearly two million dollars to acquire it. In its stead

was built Greenwich of the Park, a middle- to upper-income housing

development developed by Towne Properties, whose co-owner was a

former mayor of the city. More than hundred low-income residents were

displaced and few received the promised relocation assistance.

On Saturday, May 20, 2000 in a little park that runs down the middle of

Eighth Street and fronts Greenwich on the Park, the sixth anniversary of

the loss of the Milner Hotel was commemorated within a setting designed

by students. Former residents of the Milner, housing activists, community

leaders, and citizens gathered to hear speeches, sing songs, and re-commit

themselves to ongoing and future struggles. The artistic installation honored

the history of community activist efforts to save the hotel.

The installation had three components. First was the bright-red banner that

wrapped around trees and light posts within the park, just above head-level.

The brilliant red, in contrast with the green of the trees, caught the eye and

signaled to passerby that an event was happening. Second were five, life-

sized silhouettes, which took their form as absences cut out of wood

panels. The absences represented a critique of the dominant culture’s gaze

upon the homeless. The effect of the gaze is erasure: It operates to ignore

people without homes, to place them out of sight and to look right

through them as if they are not there. But suspended within the absence of

each silhouette was a presence, where one could read poetry by homeless

people as well as texts by former residents of the Milner. The third

component of the installation was the variety of plaques placed on the

202Engaging the School of Social Life

ground throughout the park. These plaques told the story of the Milner in

parallel with that of the Cherokee Nation and the Trail of Tears.16.37 The

juxtaposed stories of the Milner and the Trail of Tears challenged readers to

look for parallels, distinctions, and differences, and provided a historical

context for thinking about the city’s effort to socially cleanse the Central

Business District.16.38

Example 3: Response to ArtWorks Mural Project

The summer 2009 mural by the civic organization ArtWorks prompted this

Agit-Prop project.16.39 Situated at a prominent entry point into Over-the-

Rhine from downtown, the mural is the four-story likeness of Cincinnati

resident and former City Council Member Jim Tarbell. As we learned from

Kelly Jo Asbury, an artist and instructor at Chatfield College in Over-the-

Rhine who participated in the initial planning of the ArtWorks mural, the

decision-making process selecting Mr. Tarbell was not diversified or

community-based. Mr. Tarbell was one of four candidates considered for the

mural. The others were legendary boxer Ezzard Charles and icons Mr.

Spoons (a spoon-playing rhythmic genius) and Peanut Jim (Shelton—an

African American entrepreneur who wore tophat and tails as he sold

roasted nuts to generations of Cincinnati Red fans). As if the selection of

Mr. Tarbell (long-time proponent of gentrification) for the mural wasn’t

audacious enough, Mr. Tarbell is depicted in a tuxedo as the new “Peanut

Jim,” tipping his hat as if to welcome the central business district to the

neighborhood—“Come, gentrify!”

After resigning in protest from the project, Ms. Asbury described her

experience:

It only takes the slightest bit of observational skills to witness

what's going on in this community. Why does a storefront

across from a condo complex post a banner which reads

“We Shall Not Be Moved”? The streets speak openly of the

effects of development that is exclusive, aggressive, and

indignant…and mark clearly the divide between the haves

and the have-nots. The new does not include the old and I felt

it distinctly as I paid attention to what I was observing from

203Engaging the School of Social Life

16.37 Many Over-the-Rhine leaders and

citizens draw inspiration from Native

American struggles to keep their land

and ways of life. Even “reservation” is

commonly used in public discourse

about Over-the-Rhine. Hegemonic

power often invokes the neighborhood

negatively as a reservation, as a place of

pathology, while Movement folk see

Over-the-Rhine as a special reserve that

needs development but not at their

expense. At issue, of course, is the

control of land, and by extension, the

right of a community predominantly of

color to self-determination.

16.38 It has been valuable to have

architecture students involved with

other majors in Agit-Prop projects.

While such projects may not seem

“architectural” enough to some, we

have found them to be excellent

educational vehicles for a future

architect’s training. At their core, Agit-

Prop projects are community-based

and multidisciplinary. Projects involve

multiple clients and voices where

students must learn to listen carefully to

community members and design within

a participatory process that engages

them. Students have to be creative in

order to translate people’s aspirations

into physical form. And the design/build

component of these Agit-Prop

installations present their own

architectural questions of appropriate

materiality, detail, structure,

weatherization, and budget.

16.39 I want to thank Tony Ward, who

as the Distinguished Wiepking Professor

of Miami University in 2009-10, was

indispensable in seeing this project

through to completion.

one block to the next.. These observations were happening in

the midst of the selection process for the exciting four-story

mural…The one group meeting I was party to…contained

only six people outside of our project team and the staff of

ArtWorks. These six represented local businesses or

development firms, perhaps one or two actually lived in the

area. Uh, six middle-class Caucasians are not representative of

the community at large. The demographics are not served…a

‘community-based concept evolved while side-stepping the

community.16.40

Students from Chatfield College, Northern Kentucky University, and

Miami’s Residency Program embarked upon a community-based campaign

to learn how community residents felt about the mural. They designed a

flier with a modified picture of the mural, adding a blank cartoon bubble.

Community residents, business persons, and passers-by were simply asked

to consider what Mr. Tarbell’s likeness was saying and to surmise what the

mural means for the future of the neighborhood. Students were instructed

not to encourage personal attacks on Mr. Tarbell. The hundreds of

responses the students generated were decisive. And while the spectrum

from positive to negative was aptly represented, the message was clear that

most African-Americans felt the mural spells their displacement from the

Over-the-Rhine. The voices tabulated by the students resulted in two

exhibitions at two different locations, allowing the students and community

attendees to comment. Cincinnati Beacon, an internet-based local

newspaper, recorded one of these events. StreetVibes, the newspaper of the

Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, was a co-sponsor of the

project and published several community responses.

Design/Build 16.41

Our Design/Build work began in 1996 and predates the establishment of

the Center for Community Engagement (2002). By collaborating with the

Over-the-Rhine Housing Network, ReSTOC, and now their merger as

Over-the-Rhine Community Housing (OTRCH), the Design/Build Studio

works nearly exclusively with OTRCH and end users to design and

rehabilitate livable spaces for residents on lower incomes. This is keeping in

204Engaging the School of Social Life

16.40 For Kelly Jo Asbury’s full story, see

http://arts.miamioh.edu/cce/papers/

a_call_to_artists.pdf.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

16.41 For all of our design/build work,

see http://arts.muohio.edu/otr/

projects.html.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

line with OTRCH’s mission, which is to “build and sustain a diverse

neighborhood that values and benefits low-income residents. We focus on

developing and managing resident-centered affordable housing in an effort

to promote an inclusive community.”

Between 1996 and the establishment of the Residency Program, every

semester students and faculty in the Design/Build program commuted from

Miami University to Over-the-Rhine on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday

afternoons from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (a one-hour commute each way).

Now, in the Residency Program, architecture majors can spend up to 30

hours per week on the projects. As a result, our completion rate for

projects has increased dramatically.

All told, since 1996 we have completed close to twenty projects ranging in

scale from furniture pieces to single-family homes. We’ve renovated two

such homes; a laundromat/meeting space; five apartments ranging from one

to three bedrooms; the Center’s storefront location; a four-room retreat

and meeting space for an on-site resident caseworker who oversees

twenty units of housing for residents who are just out of homelessness; a

game table for Washington Park; a second-story wood and steel deck; a

fourth-story terrace (over interior space); and a commercial entity called

Venice on Vine, which is a pizzeria and food-catering operation run by

Dominican Nuns who hire “hard-to-employ” persons as a job-training

program, to name the more prominent projects.

Venice on Vine was a collaborative effort among eight architects,

contractors, and students from the architecture program of the University

of Cincinnati as well. Frank Russell, director of the Niehoff Community

Design Studio of the University of Cincinnati, was the lead architect and it

was his kind invitation that brought us into the project. The Miami students

worked with the Nuns for nearly a year, covering basic programming to

material choices and details. In November 2006, Venice on Vine was

awarded a Merit Award from the Cincinnati Chapter of the American

Institute of Architects.

Venice on Vine was a great project with lots of actors in a highly visible

location, but of equal impact for our community partners have been

projects too difficult for mainstream practitioners to pull off. For example,

205Engaging the School of Social Life

for years we heard lore about an undeveloped “mystery space” on the

fourth floor of buddy’s Place—the home of the Center for Community

Engagement on the ground floor. We heard the mystery space included a

roof deck. From the parking lot one can detect a parapet notched out of

the roof slope, but it wasn’t until spring 2010 that we got up there for a

good look.

When buddy’s Place was renovated in the mid-90s, the HUD project

funding could not be applied to non-residential spaces. So a rental office

with kitchenette and toilet was stubbed-in and wired, but left incomplete.

An adjacent space on the other side of a 14” brick wall became an attic for

leftover lumber and building supplies, with a crudely built 2 x 10 loft. The

roof deck was completed during building renovation, but only served as a

means of access to the lumber loft.

Beginning with the Summer Workshop in May 2010, the Design/Build

studio re-designed the space as the office for OTRCH’s on-site caseworker,

with a completed kitchenette, accessible toilet, and a new opening through

the brick wall into the former lumber loft that became a conference area

and small retreat space.16.42 Overall, the Design/Build Studio assists

community organizations by developing properties not easily developed

through traditional methods. Students are responsible for all phases of

work: design schematics, construction drawings for permit, working within a

budget that they often formulate, construction, and meeting with building

inspectors. By putting residential units back on line and renovating empty

storefronts for neighborhood-serving businesses, the Design/Build work

provides a tangible use-value for the community and helps fulfill the

business plans for the area’s nonprofits. The design/build projects exemplify

several levels of inquiry to the term connection: the conjunction of disparate

materials to create a harmonious composition; the insertion of new

construction into historic, urban fabric to add vibrancy and relevance

without demolishing or deprecating; the collaboration of students,

community members, consultants, and tradespeople on-site; and the

overarching theme of providing connection among people of varied

backgrounds and histories, with the assertion that we all are important

place-makers.

206Engaging the School of Social Life

16.42 Workshop participants

completed permit drawings and began

demolition, including working with an

experienced mason to set a precast

lintel for the new opening. Some

existing installed drywall was salvaged,

and subfloors were leveled and

prepared for new 5/8” bamboo. The loft

was dismantled. The 16-foot, 2x lumber

was lowered over the side of the

building and taken to the Over-the-

Rhine Community Housing warehouse

for re-use, while the remaining short

lumber was sliced and laminated with

end-grain up to create a two-piece

conference table.

In the fall the Design/Build Studio

advanced the project with meticulous

drywall and painting. They finished

leveling the floor and installed the

bamboo. They installed the 300+ pound

concrete countertop slabs, with off-the-

rack cast iron pipe legs for the bar area.

New, uncut fir French door slabs were

purchased. These were framed,

weather-stripped and installed by the

students. Poplar trim was used to

frame-out the windows and doors, with

exaggerated dimensions to mask fire

damage and broken bricks. A tongue-

and-groove fir landing was built for

code-compliant deck access, and a

custom bamboo shelf was installed in

the kitchenette below the recessed

microwave.

Student and Community Reactions 16.43

Empathy is fellow feeling for the person in need—his pain,

agony and burdens. I doubt if the problems of our teeming

ghettos will have a great chance to be solved until the white

majority, through genuine empathy, comes to feel the ache

and anguish of the Negroes’ daily life.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.16.44

Adding labor to under-staffed organizations, “grabbing an oar” in community

campaigns, generating new knowledge through artistic installations, and

putting residential units and workspaces back on line for the People’s

Movement to carry out its work: all these activities directly benefit our

community partners. In the Over-the-Rhine Residency Program, this ethic

of working for the community is non-negotiable. As students embody the

four practices of the Residency Program, the challenge put to them is, can

you see the people and the community beyond media stereotypes that

reinforce the narratives of Poverty and Renaissance? And when the

students let their guard down and open up, they change. They change by

the relationships they make with community residents, through the work

they provide. Seeing the community in its full humanity through their sustained

service and growing empathy is the life-transforming process.

At the end of the semester I have the students reflect in writing upon their

experiences, and each year, I am overwhelmed by powerful, deep-hearted

testimonies about how they wrestled with their privilege, their fears, and

even their anger at the recognition that little is done by city officials,

corporations, and state and federal governments to address the conditions

prevalent in Over-the-Rhine. Many come to see life differently. Poverty

becomes real. Voting becomes relevant. They are amazed at how the daily

lives of ordinary people affect them. They learn from those who are

homeless and their neighbors. They open their hearts and minds and

develop compassion and empathy. They see the community and realize

both its strong bonds and its responsibilities. And they see through the

stereotypes of middle-class biases.16.45

207Engaging the School of Social Life

16.43 All the student reflections of the

Over-the-Rhine Residency Program are

at: http://arts.miamioh.edu/cce/

residency_program.html.

(Accessed March 21, 2015)

16.44 Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Where

Do We Go From Here: Chaos or

Community? (Boston: Beacon Press,

1967), 107.

16.45 See Thomas A. Dutton. “The

Over-the-Rhine Residency Program.” In

Peter Senge et al, Schools That Learn.

Seeing the community

in its full humanity

through their sustained

service and growing

empathy is the life-

transforming process....

....students are

transformed by the

Residency Program in

powerful and long-

lasting ways.

Students are transformed by the Residency Program in powerful and long-

lasting ways. Their bond through the deep relationships they develop with

community members disarms them to take steps to deconstruct their

privilege, precisely because they come to see that their “privilege is a

learning disability.”16.46 As they struggle to make sense of their new

conditions and relationships, they begin to recognize a dissonance between

the mental models they have held and their current experiences. They

come to realize that the dissonance requires disassembling their middle-

class consciousness and constructing a new one that allows them to

experience life in new ways.

Going through a process like this can only be characterized as hard work—

students have to allow themselves to open their minds and hearts so that

they can be affected. As one student put it: “Before setting foot in Over-

the-Rhine, poverty didn’t exist. Secluded by the picket fences, cul-de-sacs,

half-acre lawns, and strip malls, my perception was that everyone had the

resources and money necessary to live in America. I also believed in the

idea of economic opportunity for everyone. However, Over-the-Rhine hit

me like a bat hitting an apple. Everything that made sensed crumbled. The

experience has transitioned me from a passive, accepting, and narrow-

minded idiot into a questioning, revolting, and active participant in this

corrupt “land of the free.”

Another student who struggled with certainty in the first weeks wrote:

“Coming to Over-the-Rhine I was confident in the permanency of my

beliefs, beliefs that had never been thoroughly challenged. Thankfully I was

not unwilling to be altered, I just didn’t think that it would happen…Every

single day provided me with something to ponder…I am the different

person I never thought I needed to be. Now the real challenge will be

returning to the main campus in Oxford.”

These testimonies are not isolated cases. Nearly every student walks away

with at least a recognition that urban life and econocide cannot be ignored.

As one student recently wrote: “People always say “ignorance is bliss,” but

indifference is a very comfortable route to take in life also. I can’t say I

arrived in Over-the-Rhine completely naïve, innocent, and ignorant to urban

issues that affect cities like Cincinnati, but I can say I was apathetic—not

208Engaging the School of Social Life

16.46 See Janis L. Dutton. Learning to

Unlearn: Organizational Learning, Popular

Education, and Intersecting Stories of

Community, Leadership, and Democracy

(master’s thesis), Antioch University

(May 2007).

interested or concerned, indifferent. I feel that the true gift of the Over-the-

Rhine Residency Program actually lies in its ability to make indifference

difficult. My time and experiences here have made it harder to separate

myself physically, mentally, and emotionally from the realities of injustice and

inequality.”

Community members also recognize and talk about the value of the

relationships and the shared understandings they build with students. As

students bring energy to Over-the-Rhine to learn about its people and

history through their engagement, the relationships formed provide new

opportunities for neighborhood people to tell their story, which affirms and

honors their experiences—residents become energized when they

recognize that “someone wants to hear my story.” For example, a resident

who worked with students for three years renovating a vacant storefront

for a nonprofit coffee shop, said, “Those kids have changed my life

dramatically. They have no idea. They allow me to mentor them.” Acting

now as mentors and teachers, community residents come to share their

histories and stories. And in the process, they often undergo personal

transformation and deepen their understanding of their own struggle. At

their best, these kinds of exchanges exemplify a resistance to domestic

neocolonialism and econocide because people are able to tie their

experiences to a wider social analysis and to determine their place within

that analysis.

Though the Residency Program for the students does come to an end, the

hope is that students will see their time in Over-the-Rhine as a seed to

plant elsewhere wherever they go. That as they branch out into the world,

they will seek out the Over-the-Rhines that exist everywhere and connect

there to begin the process of setting down roots. At the end of each

semester, Bonnie Neumeier tells the students one last time: “As our future

architects, city planners, social workers, advocates, journalists, teachers,

entrepreneurs, and politicians, you can bring much deeper wisdom into our

world so that equality for all is not just a dream, but can be a reality. You are

now part of this place. When you leave you will leave something of yourself

here, as I know you will take something of us with you.”

209Engaging the School of Social Life

Conclusion

At a recent architecture conference I presented our Design/Build work and

the practices of the Center more generally when a person in the audience

characterized me as “Mockbee of the inner city” (of course, the reference is

to Sam Mockbee and his colleagues of the Rural Studio of Auburn

University and their many accomplishments).16.47 I appreciate the

compliment, but there are distinctions between the programs, not least of

which is that the Center is in an urban neighborhood, dealing with city

permits and inspectors, and enacting a wide range of practices beyond

design/build—agit-prop, charrettes, design counter-schemes, productive

conversations, typical urban and architectural design investigations, and the

Over-the-Rhine Rhine Residency Program that has allowed us to deepen

these practices. Our goal is not to “do art” or to provide photogenic

shelter, but more to the point of this chapter, we engage all these practices

in order to assist a poor people’s movement in its pursuit of its self-

determination within an econocidal environment characterized by the

neocolonialist practices of gentrification and incarceration.

These conditions face many of the nation’s big cities, and Over-the-Rhine is

no exception. Over-the-Rhine, bound within a square mile, remains the

epitome of social, cultural, and economic disparity, a reality made more

apparent by the recent jargon of Renaissance. If future architects want to

be relevant within these conditions, schools and the profession will need to

move beyond the more traditional practices that are now associated with

architecture, facing squarely the striking and structural inequities that

characterize the world today. While the profession tries to change public

discourse about new building practices that can offset environmental

imbalances, it can do more to take up the mantle for social responsibility

and equitable development, and to explicitly theorize how econocide takes

form in one’s own backyard.

The strength of our work through the Center and the Residency Program

is its multiplicity, which in turn is a reflection of Over-the-Rhine as a

dynamic place of ongoing struggle over cultural and political direction, social

policy, even historical beginnings. Our work confronts these multi-layered

social-cultural and political-economic conditions of Over-the-Rhine head

210Engaging the School of Social Life

16.47 http://www.ruralstudio.org/.

(Accessed December 14, 2014)

on, engaging students, faculty, and community residents to examine the

ideological and practical assumptions (their own and others’) about why

Over-the-Rhine is the way that it is, and the need for interdisciplinary

strategies for change.

Human consciousness is always organized and produced out of such

circumstances. The Center’s pedagogy sets the conditions through which

students can unravel and critique their experiences based upon the fact

that they find themselves in social relations typically very different from

what they have known before. Through this exposure to environments and

issues that are beyond their familiarity, the intention is to transform

personal learning and to break down social and racial stereotypes. Through

a deeper engagement with other community learners who are often

without economic opportunity, or access to adequate schooling, or political

power, students come to rethink their view of the world and how their

future profession—architecture or otherwise—ought to be more

forthright in addressing social issues: In essence, to peel back the erasing

narratives of Poverty and Renaissance and to get connected to movements

challenging econocide.

The effort to address the complexities of Over-the-Rhine offers the opportunity

to rethink and reconstruct professional practices. The need for professions to

take an active role in confronting issues of social justice and equity is as

great as it ever was. In the current era of massive economic inequality and

austerity politics, many professions and disciplines overlook the fact that

under-served segments of society are suffering horribly. The Center, by

linking specifically with The People’s Movement and other groups working

to improve the conditions of lower-income residents, provides professional

services for those who rarely, if ever, have access to them. The Center

challenges disciplines to fashion their respective tools and methods to

construct a social practice, one that, through a hands-on approach to

community engagement, furthers a just, social transformation.

In his landmark The Pedagogy of the Oppressed the late Paulo Freire

discussed a concept that I hold close. His concern was “false generosity,” by

which he meant the actions of oppressors that appear benevolent and

generous but serve really to strengthen the status quo and thus their own

211Engaging the School of Social Life

The effort to address

the complexities of

Over-the-Rhine offers

the opportunity to

rethink and

reconstruct

professional practices.

power. As he wrote, “in order to have the continued opportunity to

express their ‘generosity,’ the oppressors must perpetuate injustice as well.

An unjust social order is the permanent fount of this ‘generosity,’ which is

nourished by death, despair, and poverty…True generosity consists

precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false

generosity.”16.48

Facing Freire’s challenge, the Center struggles incessantly against falling to

the level of false generosity, which is nourished by two of the most

damning, mainstream tendencies of American culture: Rugged individualism

and noblesse oblige.16.49 Because most of our students come from privileged

backgrounds, it would be misplaced to understand the Center’s work as

instituting a “pedagogy of the oppressed” along the lines of Paulo Freire. But

it is trying to institute a pedagogy against oppression—a kind of middle-

class organizing that brings those inhabiting the center to those living at the

margins. In this sense, students are not just coming to study a

neighborhood in a more direct way; they become part of it. And through

this carefully managed process, especially on the part of long-term residents

and organizers in Over-the-Rhine, relationships are built, trust develops, and

students become part of the collective motion already unfolding in the

community to control its own land and obtain access to capital and

resources. One way to cast this is to say that students are assisting in

building community in democratic ways. But the deeper pedagogical

intention here is for students to come to see a particular relationship—one

characterized by oppressor and oppressed populations. When students

gain that deeper systemic understanding about how oppression manifests

itself socially, politically, racially, and economically, the shallowness of

philanthropy and noblesse oblige and how they reproduce the status quo

becomes evident. And in their place comes the recognition that a genuine

community—one not possible through neocolonialist aspirations such as

gentrification, one that explicitly calls out econocide—becomes more likely

by students unsettling their own privilege and by affiliating directly with the

poor and marginalized of communities like Over-the-Rhine. The hope is

that affiliation can change one’s class interest.

212Engaging the School of Social Life

16.49 I thank Mike Pyatok for this

insight. Private correspondence.

16.48 Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of the

Oppressed, 29.

Thomas Fisher

Reflections

A17

The Architecture of Social Capital

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu distinguished among three forms of

capital:

Economic capital, comprising financial resources like cash and

assets;

Cultural capital, encompassing knowledge and skills;

Social capital, involving the relationships among people in

families and communities.17.1

All three forms of capital exist, to varying degrees, in every sphere of

human activity. But economic capital has become so dominant, and cultural

capital so complicit in that dominance, that those two forms of wealth almost

totally eclipse—to our detriment—the wealth that constitutes social capital.

We have come to assess the health of communities according to how

much economic capital (financial wealth, property value) and how much

cultural capital (educational attainment, institutional cachet) they have.

According to those measures, a neighborhood like Cincinnati’s Over-the-

Rhine seems impoverished and in need of improvement. But counting only

the economic and cultural capital of a place, we miss the myriad

connections, networks, and mutual support systems within a community.

These are forms of wealth as durable as any amount of money or

knowledge.

The displacement of financially impoverished people via gentrification or

the increasing dependency of a poor population on charity can result.

Although sometimes well-meaning, the misapplication of economic and

cultural capital can have the paradoxical effect of destroying the very places

214

The Architecture of Social Capital

Thomas Fisher

17.1 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of

Capital,” Richard Nice, translator.

Originally published as Ökonomisches

Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales

Kapital." in Soziale Ungleichheiten

(Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2), edited by

Reinhard Kreckel. Goettingen: Otto

Schartz & Co.. 1983. pp. 183-98. http://

www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/

theory/Bourdieu-

Forms_of_Capital.html.

(Accessed December 15, 2014)

Economic capital has

become so dominant,

and cultural capital so

complicit in that

dominance, that those

two forms of wealth

almost totally eclipse—

to our detriment—the

wealth that constitutes

social capital.

we seek to save, by killing the relationships that form communities in the

first place.

Economic and cultural capital can also negatively affect architecture. Too

great a focus on economics has driven the architectural profession toward

commodity work, as architects increasingly find themselves pressured to do

more repetitive projects, for lower fees, at a faster rate, with the most

predictable results. Accordingly, many buildings have become mostly

vehicles for the amassing of financial value for their owners.

Cultural status has pushed the architectural discipline in a seemingly

opposite direction, producing buildings that have ever more uncanny forms,

while showing relatively little concern for the structure’s function or fit. The

amassing of cultural capital in this way has become, for some clients and

architects, a matter of getting your building discussed and debated by the

critical establishment. Both forms of capital, however, obscure the social

role that architecture plays and the way in which buildings do not just

represent financial or cultural value, but also community wealth.

Miami University’s Center for Community Engagement (CCE)

demonstrates what an educational institution can accomplish when it sees

beyond the blinders of economic and cultural capital, and recognizes the

richness and durability of social capital. The wealth generated by social

capital involves neither the financial assets nor the education attainment of

individuals, but instead the intricacy and longevity of the social connections in a

place. The Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement, for example, serves as a

bank of social capital, loaning its human resources and political savvy to

people in need.

The CCE produces social value through architecture, accruing value for the

community by engaging and empowering people as they create their

physical environment. That process may take longer than the typical

financially driven project, but it generates a greater amount of collective

wealth and community cohesion. And that process may not produce

results that meet the aesthetic expectations of critical elites, but the ethical

grounding of this work fosters a different and equally valid form of cultural

capital: that of a local community or indigenous population. The value of

215The Architecture of Social Capital

Too great a focus on

economics has driven

the architectural

profession toward

commodity work.

The wealth generated

by social capital

involves neither the

financial assets nor the

education attainment

of individuals, but

instead the intricacy

and longevity of the

social connections in a

place.

socially oriented architecture, in short, may be harder to measure than that

driven by economic or cultural capital, but it has greater reach, affecting not

just a site or structure, but an entire community through the social bonds

that a building engenders as part of a participatory design process.

The CCE also represents a different form of practice. Its clients comprise

not a wealthy few, but an entire community. Meanwhile, its funding comes

not from private fees, but from student tuition, public or nonprofit

organizations, and the in-kind services of many people. Nor is it like the

typical service-learning effort at universities, in which students and faculty

members do a “hit and run” project, without an ongoing relationship and

little or no follow-up with the community. Instead, the CCE’s long-term

engagement with the people of Over-the-Rhine has resulted in a wide

range of projects, depending upon what the community helps determine it

needs. In the end, what matters in this type of practice is less the amount

of architecture produced, and more the quality of the relationships that

stem from it.

The architecture of social capital offers us one way of addressing major

societal problems, such as the growing gaps between wealth and poverty

around the world. Never before have there been so many people in such

desperate circumstances, in what Mike Davis has aptly called a “planet of

slums.”17.2 And never before have so few private individuals controlled such

a large percentage of the world’s resources, with just two percent of the

population owning 50 percent of all of the assets around the globe.17.3

Given such inequities and imbalances, social capital can play a key role in

helping communities survive the inevitable retrenchments and

readjustments ahead, as people return to the one resource on which they

can count: the mutual support systems of family and friends, neighbors and

community members. Architecture can facilitate that by creating social

space and by providing the processes by which social capital accrues.

If the CCE offers an excellent model of what the social practice of

architecture might look like, it also offers a model that the academy would

do well to consider as a vital part of its mission. In recent years, students,

donors, and outside funders have pushed for those in higher education to

engage more directly with society’s most pressing problems. Such work,

though, needs to become part of what universities consider tenure-quality

216The Architecture of Social Capital

17.2 Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Verso,

New York, 2006.

17.3 “Pioneering Study Shows Richest

Two Percent Own Half World Wealth,”

UN World Institute for Development

Economics Research. http://

www.wider.unu.edu/events/past-events/

2006-events/en_GB/05-12-2006/.

(Accessed December 15, 2014)

Never before have

there been so many

people in such

desperate

circumstances, in what

Mike Davis has aptly

called a “planet of

slums.”

activity. That will require that the faculty involved in such efforts not only act

in responsive and responsible ways in communities, but also that they take

their academic responsibilities seriously, vigorously researching and

reflecting upon this type of work and publishing the results of what has

been learned, not just among peers, but to a broad public audience. That, in

itself, can help build social capital. And, as the published work in this book

shows, it can also make for engaging and inspiring reading.

217The Architecture of Social Capital

Craig L. Wilkins

Conclusion

A18

This is not your Father’s Practice

For the last several decades, the discussion in and around architecture has

been driven solely by the image of the object. Post-modernists,

deconstructionists, and now proponents of “folding” and “blob” architecture,

despite their occasional claims to the contrary, all have been primarily, if not

exclusively, concerned with the aesthetic form of the objects produced.

And while it is true that architecture is a visual art with specific functional

requirements—requirements that are often at odds with its desire to exist

as “art for art’s sake”—the dominance of the image as the “end-all-and-be-all”

of architecture has for some, been both overdetermined and detrimental.

Overdetermined, because rightly or wrongly it allows architecture to be

seen as a profession for the privileged—distant and esoteric, with little, if

anything, to do with the way in which most people live their lives.

Detrimental, because the insistence on the primacy of the aesthetic had

positioned the architect as little more than a self-absorbed artist, busily

pursuing a tortured vision of art, concerned only with the creation of their

individual, autonomous work. However seductive that situation may be for

the individual designer, it is an untenable combination for the profession of

architecture, as establishing architects as simply aesthetic experts only,

ultimately divests them from a good, many if not all, professional

responsibilities. Individually and collectively, the contributors to this book

project have rejected this divestiture, working within the pages of this book,

in their profession, and, dare we say, their personal lives, to open up the

conversation about the value of architecture, from simply judging its visual

aesthetics to including a consideration of its visible ethics as well. At a time

when society is generally reevaluating the public role and civic contribution of

professions and their claim to expert knowledge, we’ve put together both a

“why-to” and “how-to” guide for establishing a community design center, in all

of its various forms, as architecture’s answer to the inevitable, rapidly

approaching public inquisition.

219

The dominance of the

image as the “end-all-

and-be-all” of

architecture has for

some, been both

overdetermined and

detrimental.

At a time when society

is generally reevaluating

the public role and

civic contribution of

professions and their

claim to expert

knowledge, we’ve put

together both a “why-

to” and “how-to” guide

for establishing a

community design

center.

ConclusionThis is not your Father’s Practice

Craig L. Wilkins

Why To

The overarching, unifying principle running through the disparate essays

collected in this tome is simple enough: it is the belief that everyone,

regardless of race, gender, or class, should have direct access to the expertise of

architects. Period.

The corollary—that design centers are a legitimate, if not essential,

component of the profession of architecture—is demonstrated through a

variety of perspectives in these essays, including

• the concept of community design as an architectural paradigm to

address the criticism that the profession has neglected its public duties;

• the presence of community design centers as the location of critical

practices that intentionally open up and address questions of social

responsibility and ethical aesthetics for the profession; and

• the opportunity for community design centers to open avenues for

research-based entrepreneurial practices, or act as the primary

infrastructure that facilitates civic-minded participation.

Revealed through these multiple lenses as simultaneously traditional and

non-traditional, entrepreneurial at their base and expansive in their

application, community design centers emerge as the epitome of what has

been previously described as activist architecture:

a way of perceiving, practicing and teaching design that

derives from, is relevant to, and vigorously engages the

community in which the work is placed. It is a process of

design in which communal sustainability and environmental

equity influence the physical growth and economic direction

of the built environment; an idea about practice that

redefines not only architecture and architect, but also who is

actually worthy of the discipline’s enormous gifts/abilities to

make their lives better.18.1

Clearly, this is not your father’s practice.

220This is not your Father’s Practice

18.1 Craig L. Wilkins, The Aesthetics of

Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture

and Music (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 2007): 173-74.

It is the belief that

everyone, regardless of

race, gender, or class,

should have direct

access to the expertise

of architects. Period.

Nope, this paradigm will require that practitioners be all that…and more.

In a time when the nation—and its concerns—have gone hyper-global and

multi-meta-faceted, the belief that a profession can remain relevant by

becoming increasingly narrow and inwardly focused is dangerously

delusional. The environment in which we work—and are charged to

steward—is simply too complex for that. The authors in this book all posit,

in one way or another, that design centers offer a place to begin to

construct the comprehensive practitioner; a place where the relevance of

the profession is visible and obvious to all; a place to think of ways in which

to practice that allow for a variety of structures, products and participants;

a place to become multi-meta-faceted. While other contemporary

professions embrace the comprehensive world of practice that they

monopolize, architecture has been regrettably reticent and recalcitrant in

following suit. I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating, the “continuous

adherence to and defense of increasingly obsolete disciplinary boundaries is

foolish at best.”18.2

The authors in this book have accepted the challenge of giving a

comprehensive account for an entire movement within the profession; a

movement that made a notable start, then suffered through decades of

dormancy, and now had suddenly found new life in the complexity,

contradiction, and complacency found in the built environment today. These

authors have taken upon themselves to directly address both the historical

complaints and contemporary hesitancies concerning design centers, from

the philosophical to the practical. It should be clear by now that need for

these practices is no longer in question. The recent hurricanes in Texas,

Louisiana, Florida, New Jersey and Cuba are only the beginning in terms of

climate change’s impact on communities; the financial crisis, only the latest

force ripping a blind adherence to yesteryear’s professional formulation to

shreds. These most dire events have offered architects a window of

opportunity to apply activist paradigms, albeit unevenly at times. To their

credit, many are doing so. Proponents of community design centers rightly

argue, however, that waiting on the tragic is no way to build a position, a

practice, or a profession. Something beyond the simple profit motive must

move professions and their members to do what they do. Markets

determine trades, not professions. The public determines professions,

primarily because often what is ethically correct isn’t always economically

221This is not your Father’s Practice

18.2 Ibid., 142.

Proponents of

community design

centers rightly argue,

however, that waiting

on the tragic is no way

to build a position, a

practice, or a

profession.

profitable. Markets fluctuate; principles don’t. In the current financial

condition, the market is simply a poor place to bet on the future of one’s

profession. Diversifying is the key to surviving. Thus, the essayists in this

book lessen the risk posed by the market mentality, by providing direction

and purpose toward a diverse critical practice.

How to

Now, to be fair, none of our authors would argue that community design centers

are the only place to engage an activist paradigm of architectural practice. Yet,

as many of the essays show, CDCs do provide the physical and intellectual

space to house the kind of critical engagement necessary to employ

architectural design as an integrative and iterative tool to address seemingly

intractable concerns. In considering the full range of possibilities for

professional practice, many of the pieces in this book identify existing

similarities between professional for-profit firms and academic nonprofit

centers, arguing for future collaborations between the two that might

suggest possible structural modifications of practice, or at least, a

moderation of the dominant paradigm of practice. The essays focusing on

the evolving AIA position on design centers is an indication that this is

indeed a very real possibility, if not already occurring.

One of the most important questions coming into this project has dealt

with the very real issue of how can one balance the conflict between the

professional’s self-interests and their position as champion of the shared

public resources in the built environment. Throughout the course of this

book, we would hope that the reader has understood that this is a false

dichotomy. The either/or paradigm no longer apples, if it ever did. The

essays here have either directly or indirectly scuttled this oppositional

binary. In fact, in one of the more useful turns of this concern, authors have

actually identified methods in which the pursuit of the kinds of work

typically left for design centers can actually be considered generators of

profit—that social entrepreneurship is every bit as legitimate, note-worthy

and, yes, even profitable as any other kind of entrepreneurship. If one needs

any further evidence to attest to this claim, look no further than the

plethora of green technologies and sustainable consultants exploding across

the capital terrain. Such developments go a long way to answering the

222This is not your Father’s Practice

Now, to be fair, none of

our authors would

argue that community

design centers are the

only place to engage an

activist paradigm of

architectural practice.

lingering concerns of emerging and established practitioners alike, around

how might one conceive and build a critical activist practice in our current

educational and professional paradigm. As to the closely linked issue of

what types of questions and projects should such a practice engage, again,

the authors have shown how design centers and their paradigm of activist

practice have come to be engaged with issues of economic development,

environmental conservation, sprawl, smart growth, livable communities,

open space, and regulatory rules that influence the physical design of our

buildings and communities. But beyond that, they have also shown that the

centers are not only engaged, but are critical partners in both framing and

addressing these concerns across professions and disciplines, simultaneously

becoming a more visible and ultimately essential player in the stewardship

of the built environment (the profession’s charge), while developing

additional areas of expertise that can generate additional revenue streams

for services (the professional’s desire). In many cases, to pursue these

streams will require a subtle but profound shift in the mindset of the

professional practitioner, one that values architecture, the verb, as being as

professionally fulfilling and noteworthy as architecture, the noun.

One of the more slippery concerns for the writers and editors of this book

was to demonstrate categorically how the study and practice of

architecture is made better by the work of community design centers. It is

clear to the authors of this book that we are not alone in our interest that

something from our practice go beyond just us. That sense of communal

solidarity is coming not from our colleagues per se, but from our students. For

anyone with a nose for pedagogical trends, “service learning” will be a most

familiar term. It is currently all the rage among progressive academicians

and institutions. This puts the work of design centers in the forefront of any

service learning discussion made by any university lucky enough to house a

CDC. Now…turn that high powered perception toward the incoming

student bodies in architecture schools, and you will find similar notions with

respect to their educational pedagogy. Robert Ivy said it best in a recent

Architectural Record editorial:

Something’s in the air. Call it community-based design. Call it

architecture for people. In any understanding, socially

conscious architecture seems to be blossoming again.18.3

223This is not your Father’s Practice

The sense of

communal solidarity is

coming not from our

colleagues per se, but

from our students.

18.2 Robert A. Ivy, “It’s in the Air”

Architecture Record (May 2005).

The centers are not

only engaged, but are

critical partners in

both framing and

addressing these

concerns across

professions and

disciplines.

Thus, university administrations find the CDC a useful model for future

service learning engagements in other departments. For students, they find

CDCs useful to engage in projects that have clients and tangible

consequences other than a poor grade, should they not solve the design

problem. However, what seems to be lacking in that analysis (and it is

reflected in the essays above) is a clear sense of where the faculty of these

institutions fall when considering the work of design centers. This is no

accident; for most are silent on the establishment and ultimate value of

such efforts. Thus, establishing anything more than a class or two, a studio,

or a short-semester workshop—much less an academic curriculum with

community design as a fundamental educational objective—has been…

ahm…let’s just say, difficult. The USFs—the Universities of San Francisco

and South Florida—can attest to that. After 40-plus years, it was inevitable

that some institution would try it as a pedagogical foundation; we’ve tried

almost everything else.

Further, and perhaps more germane to many reading this book, an area

that we would like to have had more speculation on is just what a tenure-

worthy package for a primary practitioner of community design might look

like. Unfortunately, a standard or blueprint has yet to be established, as only

a few cases have been made solely on this basis. But again: It is coming.

In closing, we badly wanted to end by issuing a call to arms (literally) to

make war on war-like environments and yet, we’ll refrain. Our hope is that

something in the reader is stirred by one, some, or perhaps all of the essays,

and once stirred, will compel the reader to become involved, to take up

arms—even if it is only your own—and do something radical with your art.

Should this happen, a call is unnecessary, gratuitous even. If our book has

somehow caused the reader to provide a personal directive, our work

here—establishing community design and design centers as a fundamental

pedagogical and legitimate method of professional practice—is done. And

finally, perhaps it is just me, but I believe that with the publication of this

book, community designers need make no further apologies for doing what

we do, because, as I said above…

This…is not your father’s practice...

224This is not your Father’s Practice

Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Executive Director of the National Urban League

Appendix 1

AA1

1968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Not so long ago a group of miners suddenly found themselves after an

avalanche entombed unto their death in one of the diamond mines of

South Africa, starving for food and thirsting for water and the need of

spiritual comfort. Diamonds were worthless, and they slowly met their

death.

So it is increasingly in our society today. We are skilled in the art of making

war; we are unskilled in the art of making peace. We are proficient in the

art of killing, particularly the good people; bad people are in no danger in

this country. We are ignorant in the art of living. We probe and grasp the

mysteries of atomic fission and unique and ingenious ways to handle brick

and mortar and glass, and we most often forget such simple things as the

Sermon on the Mount and the golden rule.

Somehow, there must be a place in our scheme of things for those broad

human values which transcend our materialistic grasping and our values

that are concentrated more around things and people, or else we shall find

ourselves entombed in our diamond mine of materialism.

It would be the most naïve escapist who today would be unaware that the

winds of change, as far as human aspirations are concerned, are fast

reaching tornado proportions. Throughout our world society, and

particularly in our own country, the disinherited, the disfranchised, the poor,

the black are saying in no unmistakable terms that they intend to be in or

nobody will be comfortably in.

Our choices are clear-cut: We can either engage in genocide and the

systematic extermination of the black poor in this country and poor

generally, and here we have an ideal model in Adolf Hitler ; or we can

engage in more formalized apartheid than we already have, and here we

can use as our pattern Ian Smith in South Africa. Or we can decide that the

226

1968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Executive Director of the National Urban League

Back to the Preface.

American dream and promise and the Judeo-Christian ethic are more than

rhetoric and a collection of nice clichés to be mouthed on Sunday

morning and the Fourth of July, and that they are principles to be

practiced. Here we can take as our model the Constitution and the Bible.

But the disinherited in our society today, unlike the past, are fully aware of

the gap between their standard of living and the large majority of

Americans. No longer are they the sharecroppers on farms and in rural

areas where they have not the benefit of newspapers and radio. Today, for

the most part, the poor live within a stone’s throw of the affluent. They

witness on their television sets and read in their newspapers and see

personally how the other 80 percent of Americans live. The poor no

longer assume that their status is God-made. They no longer believe that

they are congenitally and innately inferior because of their color or

because of a condition of birth. The poor are fully aware today that their

conditions are man-made and not God-decreed or constitutionally

derived.

The poor today also are quite conscious of how other people have

managed to lift themselves out of the mire of injustice and poverty—

whether it was the leaders of civil disobedience in the Boston Tea Party or

the revolutionists in the American Revolution, or the labor movement or

the woman’s suffrage movement, or the struggles of the Irish, Italians, Jews

and what have you. They know that their techniques today, which

sometimes are so glibly discredited, are the same techniques that others

have used in other periods of history when they found themselves

similarly situated.

There is one other factor that tends to accelerate and, if anything,

complicate. The poor and disinherited of our society today have found

strong allies. The allies are the young people of this country and of the

world—young people whom I’ve had an opportunity to talk with in some

100 universities, colleges and high schools this year, and many in these last

few weeks, who themselves are experiencing a degree of cynicism at best

and contempt at worst for adult values, who can document with unerring

accuracy the inconsistency in our society, the pervasive gap between what

we practice and what we preach, who point at the tragic paradox of a

society with a gross national product approaching $1 trillion and yet would

2271968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Back to the Preface.

permit 20 percent of its people to live in squalor and in poverty; a society

that willingly taxes itself to rebuild western Europe, to rebuild West

Germany. There are no slums today in West Germany; the slums are in the

Harlems of our community where black people live who have been in this

country several centuries, whose blood, sweat and tears have gone to build

this country, who gave it 250 years of free labor and another 100 of cheap

labor. They are the ones who live in the slums and who are unemployed.

These students point out how a budget of approximately $140 million was

spent last year : less than 20 percent for things that are esthetic and cultural

and educational, for health, education and welfare, and almost 70 percent

for weapons of destruction or defense against destruction.

No other country has quite this record of disproportionate expenditures.

No other country ever dreamed of this great wealth.

We are not at a loss in our society for the know-how. We have the

technology. We have the scientific know-how. We have the resources. We

are at a loss for the will.

The crisis is not in our cities. The crisis is in our hearts, the kind of human

beings we are. And I submit to you that if you are a mother or a father,

today you are being challenged either silently by young people or you will

be challenged even more violently by them, but you are risking the respect

of generations not yet adults and generations yet unborn.

In this situation there are two or three positive aspects and possibilities that

are present today that were not present in the past. One is that we today

are all aware of the problem. The black person—and I make no apology for

singling out the Negro, although I am fully aware that there are poor white

people in Appalachia, poor Mexican-Americans, poor Puerto-Ricans and

Indians—the Negro is a sort of symbol, the only involuntary immigrant in

large numbers. I make really no apologies, but the Negro today is at least

on the conscience of America. This is not to say that he loves it. Probably it

is irritating to most people, a source of great unhappiness, but it is better to

be hated than ignored. The Negro has been largely the victim, not of active

hate or active concern, but of active indifference and callousness. Less than

10 percent of white Americans wanted to lynch Negroes; less than 10

percent wanted to free them. Our problem has been the big 80 percent,

2281968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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that big blob of Americans who have been so busy “making it,” getting

ahead in their companies, getting a little house in the suburbs, lowering

their golf scores, vying for admittance to the country club, lying about their

kids’ I.Q. that they really haven’t had time to be concerned.

Our sin, then, is the sin of omission and not of commission, and into that

vacuum have rushed the prophets of doom, the violent people, the vicious

people who hate, and they have come all too often around the world to

be the voice of America. But at least we recognize the existence of a

problem. The communication is probably more candid, though more painful

than ever before, and this is progress.

And today, for the first time, we have the full attention and concern of the

establishment in America, the decision makers, the top people—I’m talking

about the Henry Fords and the Tom Watsons and the George Romneys,

the truly big people in the field of business and in government and in your

field as well. The most enlightened governors, the most enlightened mayors,

the most enlightened college presidents, even the religious leaders, are now

beginning to decide that race relations are no longer a spectator sport and

in their own enlightened self-interest they have to get involved.

A final positive thing is that we today are no longer in a quandary as to the

extent of the problem and the cause. We’ve been now the beneficiaries of

a report from the Kerner Commission, a group composed of

predominantly white, respectable, conservative, responsible people who,

the first time they met as a group, set out to identify the conspirators who

were causing the disorders and to suggest ways of suppression and control.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the final report. We invited

these gentlemen to take a visit to the ghetto—more specifically, to a

tenement house. They smilingly but naively agreed, and that was the

beginning of a significant report. We took these men into a typical

tenement house, some 14 floors, and immediately they discovered that as

sophisticated as our communications media happen to be, they still are not

able to give all the dimensions of the situation—the dimension of smell, for

example, of feel, of taste. The minute these men walked into the building,

they smelled the stench of urine. And why shouldn’t they. Little 2- and 3-

2291968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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year old boys out in my neighborhood, just when they have to go to the

bathroom and can’t make it into the house, go around to the bushes—sort

of an accepted pattern. When you live in the 14-story tenement house

with no elevator, little boys can’t quite make it and do what little 2- and 3-

year old boys do normally.

These men went up the stairs. They made it as far as the seventh floor;

they weren’t in the best of physical shape. We took them into an

apartment, typical, six people living in it, two rooms, four children. They saw

the little 1-1/2 year-old with a shrunken stomach. All he had to eat that day

was a bowl of cornflakes, and it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon.

They talked to the mother whose eyes were bloodshot because she had

stayed awake all night trying to keep the rats from biting the children. They

saw the rat holes, saw the roaches. Then they talked to the father—

alienated, bitter, because he suffered the daily humiliation of not being able

to support his children, not playing the role of father, not being able even to

buy the kid an ice cream cone.

Repeated experiences like that left no choice except to, as we say, tell it like

it is. It upset many Americans, accused of being racists, to be told in no

uncertain language that, in fact, there is this gap between how some

Americans live.

We are a proud people. We like to kid ourselves into believing that we are

good Christians, good human beings; but it isn’t true. These men were not

starry-eyed liberals, not sentimental do-gooders. These were white

conservatives. I’ve always been told that white people were always right; I

assume they’re right. Rap Brown didn’t write the report. The report was

written by these people that you know as well as I do. And you know that

when good people want a social audit, you take it just as seriously as a fiscal

audit that says you’re in arrears and bankrupt, or a health audit that says

you have tuberculosis and you wouldn’t go out to see a mechanic and try

to get him to dispute the claim.

We are a racist nation, and no way in the world could it be otherwise given

the history of our country. Being a racist doesn’t mean one wants to go out

and join a lynch mob or send somebody off to Africa or engage in crude,

vulgar expressions of prejudice. Racism is a basic assumption of superiority

2301968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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on the part of one group over another, and in America it had to happen

because as a society we enslaved people for 250 years, and up until 1964 it

was written into our laws and enforced by social custom—discrimination

against human beings that a man because of the color of his skin couldn’t

go into a restaurant or hotel or be served in public places.

Now, there’s no way in the world, unless we are more a nation of

schizophrenics than I think, that we could have this kind of law tolerated

and this kind of social custom and still have gone to church on Sunday and

mouthed all those platitudes if we didn’t honestly believe that some were

superior to others. Racism reflects itself in many little ways—little to you,

but big to some people.

What I am really talking about here is your role. To realize it as a citizen, it

begins in the home. Dear Lord, let there be peace at home, and let it begin

with me.

A young man stood up in a meeting a couple of weeks ago—a white

fellow, an SDS student—and he really blasted the white audience for its

prejudice and bigotry and hypocrisy, and then ended up by saying, “So if it

means we have to level down with them to achieve equality with all human

beings, then white people must do this.”

This is a racist statement. I pointed this out. The only reason he could think

of leveling down was that he was assuming that superiority relates to

acquisition of material things, technology, money and clothes. It’s

conceivable that it might be a leveling upward, or it might be a bringing

together on the one hand qualities of humaneness, compassion and style.

This society needs a great deal of technology and money and material

things. And so we are giving to each other.

If we are going to do anything about changing the individual, let us first

admit that it is easier to have lived in a leper colony and not acquired

leprosy than to have lived in America and not acquired prejudice. You don’t

start changing until you first admit you have it.

Second, you are not a profession that has distinguished itself by your social

and civic contributions to the cause of civil rights, and I am sure this does

2311968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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not come to you as any shock. You are most distinguished by your

thunderous silence and your complete irrelevance.

You have a nice, normal escape hatch in your historical ethical code or

something that says after all, you are the designers and not the builders;

your role is to give people what they want.

That’s a nice, easy way to cop out. But I have read about architects who

had courage, who had a social sensitivity, and I can’t help but wonder about

an architect who designs some of the public housing that I see in the cities

of this country—how he could even compromise his own profession and

his own sense of values to have built 35- or 40-story buildings, these

vertical slums, and not even put a restroom in the basement and leave

enough recreational space for about 10 kids when there must be 5,000 in

the building. That architects as a profession wouldn’t as a group stand up

and say something about this is disturbing to me.

You are employers, you are key people in the planning of our cities today.

You share the responsibility for the mess we are in in terms of the white

noose around the central city. It didn’t just happen. We didn’t just suddenly

get this situation. It was carefully planned.

I went back recently and looked at ads when they first started building

subdivisions in this country: “Easy access to town, good shopping centers,

good schools, no Negroes, no Jews allowed”—that was the original

statement. Then they decided in New York that that was cutting the market

too close, so they said the next day, “No Negroes allowed.” And then they

got cute when they thought everybody had the message, and they said

“restricted, exclusive neighborhood, homogenous neighborhood.”

Everybody knows what those words mean.

Even the federal government participated, saying that they must be

compatible neighborhoods for FHA mortgages, homogenous

neighborhoods. The federal government participated in building the nice

middle-class housing in the suburbs, putting all the public housing in the

central city.

It took a great deal of skill and creativity and imagination to build the kind

of situation we have, and it is going to take skill and imagination and

2321968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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creativity to change it. We are going to have to have people as committed

to doing the right thing, to “inclusiveness,” as we have in the past to

exclusiveness.

You are also here as educators. Many of you are in educational institutions. I

took the time to call up a young man who just finished at Yale. I said, “What

would you say if you were making the speech I’m supposed to make

today?” Because he did have some strong observations to make, he said he

did want you to begin to speak out as a profession, he did want in his own

classroom to see more Negroes, he wanted to see more Negro teachers.

He wanted while his classwork was going on for you somehow as

educators to get involved in the community around you.

When you go to a college town—Champagne-Urbana, for example, where

the University of Illinois is about the only major institution—you will see

within two or three blocks some of the worse slums in the country. It is

amazing how within a stone’s throw of the School of Architecture you have

absolutely complete indifference—unless you have a federal grant for

research, and even then it’s to study the problem.

I hope you accept my recommendation for a moratorium on the study of

the Negro in this country. He has been dissected and analyzed, horizontally

and vertically and diagonally. And if there are any further studies—I’m not

anti-intellectual—I hope we’ll make them on white people, and that instead

of studying the souls of black people we’ll be studying the souls of white

people; instead of the anatomy of Watts, we’ll do an anatomy of Cicero, an

anatomy of Bronxville.

What’s wrong with the people in these neighborhoods? Why do they want

– themselves just one generation removed from welfare or in many cases

just one generation within the country, where they have come here

sometimes escaping hate and have come here and acquired freedom—

why do they want to turn their backs and say in Cicero, “Al Capone can

move in, but Ralph Bunche can’t?” Why are they so insecure? Why do

people want to live in these bland, sterile, antiseptic, gilded ghettos, giving

sameness to each, compounding mediocrity in a world that is 75 percent

nonwhite, in a world where in 15 minutes you can take a space ship and fly

from Kennedy to South Africa? Why would anybody want to let their

children grow up in this kind of situation?

2331968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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I think this kind of affluent peasant ought to be studied. These are people

who have acquired middle-class incomes because of strong labor unions

and because they are living in an unprecedented affluent period. But in

things esthetic and educational and cultural, they leave a lot to be desired.

They wouldn’t know the difference between Karl Marx and Groucho Marx.

This is where our problem is. We can move next door to Rockefeller in

Tarrytown, but I couldn’t move into Bronxville. Any white pimp or

prostitute can move into Bronxville. A Jew could hardly move into

Bronxville, incidentally.

As a profession, you ought to be taking stands on these kinds of things. If

you don’t as architects stand up and endorse Model Cities and

appropriations, if you don’t speak out for rent supplements or the housing

bill calling for a million houses, if you don’t speak out for some kind of

scholarship program that will enable you to consciously and deliberately

seek to bring in minority people who have been discriminated against in

many cases, then you will have done a disservice to the memory of John

Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bob Kennedy and, to yourselves.

You are part of this society. It is not easy. I am not suggesting the easy road,

but the time has come when no longer the kooks and crackpots speak for

America. The decent people have to learn to speak up, and you shouldn’t

have to be the victim to feel for other people. I make no pretense that it is

easy.

You have riots and shouts of black power. Anybody who looks for an

excuse to cop out in this can use it, but I insist that if you believe in equality

then we have as much right to have crackpots. There is no reason why

white people should have a monopoly. If we have been able to put up all

these years with the Ku Klux Klan, with burning and lynching, with the

George Lincoln Rockwells, with the citizens’ councils, with slaveowners, and

still don’t generalize about all white people, why should white people

generalize about all Negroes on the basis of a few? All Negroes didn’t riot

in Watts. All Negroes didn’t riot in Newark. One out of three in Newark

were whites and one out of five in Watts, and that’s why Newark had

more violence. White people are more experienced.

2341968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

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It’s the same business of generalizing--no such thing as a black is a black

man, a white is a white man. We have our right to an Adam Clayton Powell

if the Irish have the right to a Curley. He would make Adam Clayton Powell

the epitome of political morality. Nobody generalizes about the Italians

because of the appearance of a disproportionate number in the Mafia.

Nobody indicts all of them. Nobody indicts all white men because a white

man killed President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy, or Martin Luther King, or a

white man stands in a tower in Texas and kills 14 people, or a white man

assaults and kills eight nurses in Chicago. They didn’t call him “white.” We

called him “sick,” and that’s what he was. With the Negroes, it’s “the black

man.” We fall victims to clichés like “law” and “order.” The best example

we’ve ever had of order in this world was that created by Adolf Hitler with

his Gestapo and his police. He got perfect order. There was no dissent –

goose-stepping all over the place—and he used that order to bring about

the death of 14 million people, 6 million of them in ovens.

There will never be order without justice. And the first prerequisite for

order in this society is that there must be justice. The women would still be

disorderly in this country if they hadn’t gotten the right to vote, and the

workers would have torn it apart if they hadn’t gotten the Wagner Act, and

America would still be fighting England if we had not won the war.

We must have justice. Civil disobedience and lawlessness have been

practiced not by black people in this society but by white people who

denied the laws of God and the laws of the Constitution.

A Wallace stands up and talks about law: Who was more lawless, engaged

in more civil disobedience than that man? Who stands in the doorway of

the courts and constantly berates the Supreme Court of the United

States? Talk about respect for law and order! We who have been the

victims of the most unscrupulous practices by merchants, by landlords, by

employers, by public officials, we know something about lawlessness.

When you talk about crime, talk about the syndicate boss who lives

downtown; and he’s white and responsible for the dope and the

prostitution and the numbers racket that causes 60 percent of the crime in

the ghetto. Talk about the guy who charges too much interest rate or the

guy who makes people pay $500 for a $175 television set.

2351968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Back to the Preface.

Finally, let me dwell on your role as men, because I think this probably more

basic than anything. Sure, you’re architects. You’re a lot of things—you’re

Republicans, Democrats, and a few John Birchers. You’re a good many things

but you’re men and you’re fathers. I would hope that somehow you would

understand that this issue, more than any other of human rights, today

separates the phony from the real, the man from the boy.

Baseball’s Rickey solved the problem of attitudes and how long it takes. I

disagree with you that it takes a long time to change attitudes. It doesn’t

take any time to change them overnight. When he brought Jackie Robinson

to the Dodgers, there was this ballplayer who said I’m not going to play

with that “nigger.” He thought Rickey would flap like most employers. I

imagine most architects thought he would say that he’d pull away. But he

didn’t know Rickey very well. Rickey was kind. He said, “Give him three or

four days.” Well, at the end of a few days, Robinson had five home runs,

stolen many bases. This fellow was reassessing his options: He could go

back to Alabama and maybe make $20 a week picking cotton, or stay there

with the Dodgers and continue to work. And, now it looked like Jackie

would get him into the World Series and a bonus of $5,000, which he did.

The only color he was concerned with was green.

We see it happening in Vietnam. White boys from Mississippi in Vietnam

develop more respect and admiration for their black sergeant in one week

because they too have made their own assessment and have decided to be

liberal white boys from Mississippi instead of dead white bigots. They’re

interested in survival and the sergeant is skilled in the art of surviving, and

they say “Mr. Sergeant”—changed overnight.

Why is it that the best example of American democracy is found in the

muck and mire of Vietnam? Why is it that the greatest freedom the black

man has is the freedom to die in Vietnam; and as he dies, why do his loved

ones, his kids and his wife and his mother have to fight for the right to buy

a house where they want to? There is something wrong with that kind of

society.

I do want to relate one last story. Mel Batten, who is the chairman of the

board of J.C. Penney, about four months ago was having breakfast with his

kids, one girl 21 and a boy 23, and they asked what he was going to do that

2361968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Back to the Preface.

week. He said, “I’m going out with Whitney Young and I have a series of

luncheons in some three or four cities. I’m hosting these, and I’m going

around talking about expanding employment opportunities for Negro

citizens and giving money to the Urban League. (Incidentally, I don’t want to

miss that plus: You also are distinguished by the fact that I bet we have

fewer architects and fewer architectural firms contributing to the national

Urban League than any group in the country. This is probably my fault and I

apologize—you have not been solicited. Next time it will be your fault.)

But when he told these kids, his boy said, “You’re going to do what?” He

repeated it to him. And the boy said, “You mean you’re not going to

maximize the profits of J.C. Penney today! You’re not going out this week to

undercut Woolworth’s; you’re not going out to see if you can get

something a little cheaper and increase the margin of profits of some

product?” And the father answered, “No.”

The 21-year-old daughter, without saying a word, ran over and hugged and

kissed him with tears in her eyes. He said to me, “I never had as much

respect and affection and admiration from my kids that I had in that one

moment.”

Here is a man who gives his children everything—sports cars, big

allowances, clothes, big tuition. That isn’t what counts. They take that for

granted. Here is a man who suddenly became a man with guts concerned

about other human beings. Here is a man who is willing to stand up and be

counted. That’s what these kids care about.

You talk about communication with these kids; they tell you why you don’t

communicate. They tell me you are inconsistent. You tell them they

shouldn’t smoke, drink and pet because everybody else does, that you have

your own value systems, stand up for what you believe in, do what you

know is right. Then, they say “My mother and my dad never do. They never

lift their finger to let a black man in business at the top level, never try to

get a Negro into the neighborhood, into the club or church. They just go

along.”

I submit to you that this is a mistake in your role as a parent and as a

human being. If you cannot identify with the kind of thing I described, that

2371968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Back to the Preface.

the Kerner Commission saw—it happens even today in this country—if

you can’t as a mother and as a father, you are in worse shape than the

victims.

So, what’s at stake then is your country, your profession, and you as a

decent civilized human being. Anatole France once said, “I prefer the error

of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom.” For a society that has

permitted itself the luxury of an excess of callousness and indifference, we

can now afford to permit ourselves the luxury of an excess of caring and

of concern. It is easier to cool a zealot than it is to warm a corporation.

An ancient Greek scholar was once asked to predict when the Greeks

would achieve victory in Athens. He replied, “We shall achieve victory in

Athens and justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as

indignant as those who are.”

And so shall it be with this problem of human rights in this country.

2381968 AIA Convention Keynote Address

Back to the Preface.

Source: AIA Programs and Initiatives

Communities by Design Initiative

Appendix 2

AA2

AIA Ten Principles for Livable

[Source: AIA Programs and Initiatives, Communities by Design Initiative]

1. Design on a Human Scale

Compact, pedestrian-friendly communities allow residents to walk to shops,

services, cultural resources, and jobs and can reduce traffic congestion and

benefit people's health.

2. Provide Choices

People want variety in housing, shopping, recreation, transportation, and

employment. Variety creates lively neighborhoods and accommodates

residents in different stages of their lives.

3. Encourage Mixed-Use Development

Integrating different land uses and varied building types creates vibrant,

pedestrian-friendly and diverse communities.

4. Preserve Urban Centers

Restoring, revitalizing, and infilling urban centers takes advantage of existing

streets, services and buildings and avoids the need for new infrastructure.

This helps to curb sprawl and promote stability for city neighborhoods.

5. Vary Transportation Options

Giving people the option of walking, biking and using public transit, in

addition to driving, reduces traffic congestion, protects the environment

and encourages physical activity.

240

AIA Ten Principles for Livable Communities

6. Build Vibrant Public Spaces

Citizens need welcoming, well-defined public places to stimulate face-to-

face interaction, collectively celebrate and mourn, encourage civic

participation, admire public art, and gather for public events.

7. Create a Neighborhood Identity

A "sense of place" gives neighborhoods a unique character, enhances the

walking environment, and creates pride in the community.

8. Protect Environmental Resources

A well-designed balance of nature and development preserves natural

systems, protects waterways from pollution, reduces air pollution, and

protects property values.

9. Conserve Landscapes

Open space, farms, and wildlife habitat are essential for environmental,

recreational, and cultural reasons.

10. Design Matters

Design excellence is the foundation of successful and healthy communities.

241AIA Ten Principles for Livable Communities

Appendix 3

AA3

Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

AIA Center for Communities by Design

The American Institute of Architects

1735 New York Ave., NW

Washington, DC 20006-5292

800-AIA-3837

http://www.aia.org/about/initiatives/AIAS075265

Architecture for Humanity

26 O'Farrell St, Suite 310

San Francisco, CA 94108

415-963-3511

http://architectureforhumanity.org/

Asian Neighborhood Design

1245 Howard Street

San Francisco, CA 94103

415-575-0423

http://www.andnet.org/

Association for Community Design

http://www.communitydesign.org/

buldingcommunityWorkshop (bcWorkshop)

416 South Ervay

Dallas, Texas 75201

214-252-2900

http://www.bcworkshop.org/

243

Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

Campus Compact

45 Temple Place

Boston, MA 02111

617-357-1881

http://www.compact.org/

Center for Resilient Design

New Jersey Institute of Technology

Center for Resilient Design

University Heights

Newark, New Jersey 08102

http://centerforresilientdesign.org/

Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC)

Kent State University

309 Euclid Avenue

Cleveland, OH 44115

216-357-3434

http://www.cudc.kent.edu/

Community Design Collaborative of Philadelphia

1216 Arch Street, First Floor

Philadelphia, PA 19107

215-587-9290

http://cdesignc.org/

Community Design Center of Pittsburgh

The Bank Tower

307 Fourth Ave, 15th Floor

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

412-391-4144 

http://designcenterpgh.org/

244Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

Democracy Collaborative

Washington, D.C. office

6930 Carroll Ave., Suite 501Takoma Park, MD 20912

202-559-1473

Cleveland, Ohio office

The Hanna Building

1422 Euclid Ave

Suite 616 

Cleveland, OH 44115

216-282-2022

http://democracycollaborative.org/

Design Corps

2243 The Circle

Raleigh, NC 27608

919-637-2804

https://designcorps.org/

Detroit Collaborative Design Center (DCDC)

4001 W. McNichols Rd.

Detroit MI, 48221    

313-993-1037

http://www.dcdc-udm.org

Enterprise Community Partners

Rose Architectural Fellowship Program

70 Corporate Center

11000 Broken Land Parkway, Suite 700

Columbia, MD 21044

800-624-4298

http://www.enterprisecommunity.com/

245Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

Environmental Design Research Association

http://www.edra.org/

Imagining America

203 Tolley Building

Syracuse University

Syracuse, NY 13244

315-443-8590

http://imaginingamerica.org/

Miami University Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine

Department of Architecture and Interior Design

Oxford, OH

513-529-6445

http://arts.miamioh.edu/cce/

Minnesota Design Team

AIA Minnesota

275 Market Street, Suite 54

Minneapolis, MN 55405

612-338-6763

http://www.aia-mn.org/get-involved/committees/minnesota-design-team/

National Charrette Institute

1028 SE Water Ave., Suite 245

Portland, OR 97214

503-233-8486 

http://www.charretteinstitute.org/

Neighborhood Design Center

In Baltimore:

1401 Hollins Street

Baltimore, MD 21223

410-233-9686

246Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

In Prince George’s County:

6103 Baltimore Avenue

Suite 104

Riverdale, MD 20737

301-779-6010

http://ndc-md.org/

North Carolina State University

Community Design + Planning

Campus Box 7701

Raleigh, NC 27695-7701

http://design.ncsu.edu/academics/landscape-architecture/faculty-student-

scholarship/community-design-planning

Pratt Institute Center for Community Development

718-636-3486

http://prattcenter.net/

Public Architecture

1211 Folsom Street, 4th Floor

San Francisco, CA 94103

415-861-8200

http://www.publicarchitecture.org/

The Rural Studio

Auburn University

8448 AL Highway 61

Newbern, AL 36765

334-624-4483

rstudio@auburn.edu

247Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

Studio 804

University of Kansas

Marvin Hall

1465 Jayhawk Blvd., Room 105

Lawrence, KS. 66045-7614

http://www.studio804.com/

University of San Francisco

Architecture and Community Design Program

Department of Art + Architecture

2130 Fulton Street

San Francisco, CA 94117-1080

415-422-5555

http://www.usfca.edu/artsci/arcd/

University of South Florida

School of Architecture and Community Design

4202 E Fowler Ave.

HMS-301

Tampa, FL 33620

813-974-4031

http://arch.usf.edu/

University of Washington

Howard S. Wright Neighborhood Design/Build Studio

School of Architecture

208 Gould Hall, Box 355720 

Seattle, WA 98195-5720 

206-543-4180

http://arch.be.washington.edu/programs-courses/specialized-studios/

neighborhood-designbuild-studio

248Community Design Centers & Support Organizations Featured in this Volume

Biographies

ABio

Editors

Dan Pitera, FAIA, Loeb Fellow

Full Professor; Executive Director: Detroit Collaborative Design Center

University of Detroit Mercy School of Archtiecture

Dan Pitera holds the position that the future and sustainability of any

neighborhood lies in the hands of its residents. Dan Pitera co-led the Civic

Engagement process for the Detroit Works Project Long Term Planning

initiated by Mayor Bing in 2010. On January 9, 2013, Long Term Planning

team released its decision-making framework titled: Detroit Future City.

Mr. Pitera was a 2004-2005 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University. He was

inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects

in 2010, an honor bestow to only 3% of all American architects. Under his

direction since 2000, the Design Center won the 2011 and 2002 Dedalo

Minosse International Prize and was included in the US Pavilion of the 2008

and 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture. The Center was awarded the

2011 SEED Award and the 2009 Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Design

Excellence for the St. Joseph Rebuild Center in New Orleans. The Design

Center was the recipient of the NCARB Prize in 2002 and 2009 and was

included in the international exhibit/conference ArchiLab in 2001 and 2004

in Orleans, France. Mr. Pitera was a resource member for the 40th and

43rd Mayor’s Institute for City Design (MICD) and a facilitator for the

MICD 25th anniversary in 2011. In 1998, Mr. Pitera was the Hyde Chair of

Excellence at the University of Nebraska. His teaching experience includes

the University of California at Berkeley, California College of Arts and

Crafts, San Francisco, Harvard University Graduate School of Design,

University of Kansas, University of Nebraska. He has lectured extensively

throughout the North America, Australia, South America, and Europe.

250

Biographies

Craig L. Wilkins, Ph.D., AIA, NOMA, ARA

Former Director, Detroit Community Design Center (DCDC), University

of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Architect, activist and theorist Dr. Craig L. Wilkins serves on the faculty of

the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. The

former director of the Detroit Community Design Center and hip hop

architectural theorist is recognized as one of the country’s leading scholars

on the African American experience in the field of architecture. Recipient

of the 2008 Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture's

Collaborative Practice Award, Dr. Wilkins is also the author of The

Aesthetics of Equity: Notes on Race, Space, Architecture and Music

(University of Minnesota, 2007), which was awarded the 2008 Montaigne

Medal for Best New Writing, the 2009 National Indie Excellence Award in

the Social Change category and was a finalist in the Education/Academic

category. In 2010, he was named a Kresge Artist Fellow.

Dr. Wilkins’ practice specializes in engaging communities in collaborative

and participatory design processes. Currently, his work focuses on what he

describes as urban acupunctures; small architectures that relieve the

pressures of everyday life, often built with salvaged and repurposed

materials in the city’s neglected spaces. These small architectures ultimately

illustrate what he calls “the aesthetics of making-do” and parallels the loose

and still-evolving principles of the nascent hip hop architecture movement

– reusing discard objects, using materials for unintended purposes,

rewriting former definitions of the good, the useful and the beautiful in

space and place, inviting users to create their own environment, etc – the

types of reuses that are now being deployed by architectural designers to

develop places and structures for new communities. His design and literary

work has been shown both nationally and internationally, appearing in such

media as the Journal of Architectural Education, the International Review

of African American Art, The Architect’s Newspaper, Washington

Post, Houston Chronicle, Detroit News, Miami Herald, Atlantic Cities,

and Fast Company, and exhibited at the Museum of Outstanding Design in

Como, Italy.  Most recently, his work on transit stops in Detroit received

an A' Design and International Competition Silver Award for Social Design

in 2014.

251Biographies

Dr. Wilkins received his doctorate from the University of Minnesota

College of Liberal Arts; his masters from the Columbia University Graduate

School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and his bachelors from

the University of Detroit School of Architecture. 

Authors

Sherri Blake, Ph.D.

Associate Professor, Department of City Planning, University of Manitoba

Sheri Blake, D.Eng. (Arch), MCIP, is Associate Professor, Department of City

Planning, University of Manitoba. She is a former Monbusho Scholar and

Fulbright Scholar. She specializes in creative community engagement and

participatory design, community revitalization, and community and

economic development. She is the recipient of several grants including the

Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and the Social

Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada’s Research/Creation

Grant in Fine Arts. Blake has provided a range of pro bono technical

assistance in planning and design along with grant writing support to non-

profit initiatives since moving to Winnipeg, MB, Canada in 1997.

Charles Bohl, PhD

Research Associate Professor, Director of the Graduate Program in Real

Estate Development and Urbanism, University of Miami School of

Architecture.

An expert on mixed-use development, Dr. Bohl is the founding director of

the Knight Program in Community Building (2000-2008). He teaches livable

community planning, design and development and has extensive public and

private sector charrette experience. Dr. Bohl is the author of Place Making:

Developing Town Centers, Main Streets and Urban Villages (2002), a best-

selling book published by the Urban Land Institute now in its 5th printing.

His most recent book, co-edited with Professor JeanFrançois Lejuene, is

Sitte, Hegemann, and the Metropolis: Modern Civic Art And International

Exchanges (Routledge, 2008). Dr. Bohl is the co-founder and co-editor of

252Biographies

the Journal of Urbanism, a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal

devoted to international research on place making and urban sustainability

published by Routledge. He holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from

the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

David Brain

Professor of Sociology, New College of Florida; Principal, Collaborative

Community Design

David Brain studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati before an

interest in urban issues led him to a BA in Sociology at the University of

California, Berkeley, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology at Harvard

University. He taught at Harvard and Indiana University before joining the

faculty at New College of Florida.  

Mr. Brain’s research and publications have focused on the connections

between place-making, community-building, and civic engagement, with a

particular focus on public participation in planning and design.  His

experience has included consulting on master planning and public process,

directing neighborhood-oriented action research projects that engage

students in collaboration with local community groups, and contributing to

educational programs for citizens and practitioners.  He is a frequent

contributor to educational programs for citizens and professional

practitioners.

As a member of the board of directors and training faculty of the National

Charrette Institute, and a principal of Collaborative Community Design, a

company focused on the interdisciplinary and community-based

collaboration required to build low-impact, resource-efficient, and

sustainable urban neighborhoods, Mr. Brain has provided training in

charrette practice for architects, planners, public agencies, community

leaders, and citizens.  He is also a partner in High Cove, a village in the

mountains of western North Carolina designed as an experiment in

ecologically responsible development practices. 

253Biographies

Jana Cephas

Lecturer, University of California, Berkeley

Jana Cephas is a designer, researcher and community activist focusing on

the relationships between urban landscapes and emergent subjectivities.

Her scholarship fuses critical theory, cultural history, and science and

technology studies to reveal the social implications of spatial practices,

especially as they relate to the intersections of technology, the body, and

the social stratifications of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Building upon

her previous work on the cultural geography of informal economic

networks operating within marginalized landscapes, Jana is also interested in

ethnographies of modern subjectivity, the architectonics of class conflicts

and the social organization of work.

Anthony J. Costello, FAIA

Irving Distinguished Professor of Architecture (emeritus)

Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, Principal, Costello + Associates

Mr. Costello is the founder of Ball State's Community-Based Projects (CBP)

Program and the Muncie Urban Design Studio (MUDS). He has frequently

been an invited lecturer at schools and conferences in both the U.S. and

U.K. focusing on community-based, urban design education and citizen

participation. He holds a Bachelors of Architecture from the Middle East

Teknik University, Ankara, Turkey, which he attended on a Fulbright

Scholarship, A Bachelors of Architecture (Honors) from Pratt Institute and

a Masters of Science in Architecture in (Urban Design) from Columbia

University. He also did post graduate work at Harvard and MIT in planning

law and public policy while on a Lilly Open Faculty Fellowship.

Kathleen Dorgan, AIA, Loeb Fellow

Principal of Dorgan Architecture & Planning, ACD Partners

Ms. Dorgan is a distinguished practitioner of comprehensive community

development. Trained as both an architect (BS and B.Arch. Rensselaer) and

an urban planner (MS Pratt), she has contributed to the development of

254Biographies

incremental strategies for neighborhood renewal and community building.

Her areas of expertise include participatory design, public funding,

homeownership, not for profit organizations, and historic preservation and

her work is featured in Good Neighbors: Affordable Family Housing, The

Design Advisor and Design Matters and the National Building Museum’s

exhibit “Affordable Housing: Designing an American Asset.” Chair of the

AIA Housing Knowledge Community and past-president of the Association

for Community Design, her areas of expertise include participatory and

green design, affordable housing, public funding, homeownership, not for

profit organizations, and historic preservation. A former executive director

of the Capitol Hill Improvement Corporation in Albany NY, she also

worked for TAP, a community design center in Troy, and has taught at Roger

Williams University, as well as Russell Sage, Empire State, and Becker

Colleges.

Tom Dutton

Professor and Director, Miami University Center For Community

Engagement in Over-The-Rhine

Mr. Dutton is an architect and professor of architecture and interior design

at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. He is co-editor (with Lian Hurst Mann)

of Reconstructing Architecture: Critical Discourses and Social Practices

(University of Minnesota Press, 1996) and editor of Voices in Architectural

Education: Cultural Politics and Pedagogy (Bergin and Garvey, 1991). He has

published in such journals as the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE),

Designer/Builder, Rethinking Marxism, The Nation, and Z Magazine. He has

twice served on the Board of Directors of the Association of Collegiate

Schools of Architecture (ACSA) and as a member of the editorial board of

the JAE from 1989-99, where he helped guest edit special editions on

critical pedagogy, postmodern pedagogy, and housing and architecture. He

also served as the journal's Associate Editor for book reviews from

1995-99. Dutton has received many awards for his teaching, including the

ACSA’s Creative Achievement Award (1990) for his sustained

contributions to architectural design education and his creative use of the

design studio; the Crossan Hays Curry Distinguished Educator Award from

255Biographies

Miami University's School of Fine Arts (1996); and more recently he has

been recognized by the Neighborhood Design Corporation of Cincinnati

for the accomplishments of the Over-the-Rhine Design/Build Studio (1999,

2005), where he and his students design and rehabilitate housing for low-

and moderate-income people in the city. Mr. Dutton received his Masters

of Architecture and Urban Design from Washington University, St. Louis

and his Bachelors of Architecture from California Polytechnic State

University, San Luis Obispo.

Thomas Fisher

Professor & Dean, University of Minnesota College of Design

Mr. Fisher has served as the Editorial Director of Progressive Architecture

and Building Renovation magazines, as the Historical Architect for the

Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office, as the Regional

Preservation Officer at the Western Reserve Historical Society, and as an

historian with the Historic American Engineering Record. He has lectured

or juried at over 30 different schools of architecture and over 60

professional societies, published 2 books, 14 book chapters, and over 200

major articles in various magazines and journals. His research revolves

around the relationship between the history of ideas and the design and

production of architecture. A recent focus has been on the ethical,

economic, and cultural ideas that drive unsustainable building practices in

the United States, and on the development of new design tools and

conceptual structures that would allow us to create a more

environmentally sustainable built world. Mr. Fisher also remains active as an

architectural critic, writing frequently for professional and newsstand

magazines. His books, Salmela, Architect (2005) and In the Scheme of

Things, Alternative Thinking on the Practice of Architecture (2006), were

published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Andrea Gollin

Publications Manager, Knight Program in Community Building, University of

Miami

256Biographies

Doug Kelbaugh, FAIA

Professor and former Dean, University of Michigan Taubman College of

Architecture + Urban Planning

Mr. Kelbaugh received his BA degree Magna Cum Laude and Master of

Architecture degree from Princeton University. Between degrees, he

founded a community design center in Trenton, New Jersey, and later

worked for five years in local government as a planner and architect. In

1978, he founded Kelbaugh & Lee, a firm that won over 15 regional and

national design awards and competitions in half as many years. In 1996, he

was nominated for the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and in 2007,

Mr. Kelbaugh was selected as one of the top seven Architecture Educators

of the Year by Design Intelligence. With Peter Calthorpe he edited and co-

authored in 1989 The Pedestrian Pocket Book, a national bestseller in urban

design that documented their pioneering work in transit-oriented

development and helped jump-start the New Urbanism and Smart

Growth movements. Kelbaugh also authored COMMON PLACE: Toward

Neighborhood and Regional Design, a book on the theory, design and

practice of regionalism published (UW Press, 1997), now in its second

printing. UW Press published its sequel, Repairing the American Metropolis:

Beyond Common Place, in 2002. In 2008, Routledge published Writing

Urbanism: an Urban Design Reader.  AIA Michigan gave Mr. Kelbaugh its

2001 President’s Award for his contributions to architectural education and

the profession.

Stephen Luoni

Director, University of Arkansas Community Design Center (UACDC) and

Steven L. Anderson Chair in Architecture and Urban Studies

Stephen Luoni is Director of the University of Arkansas Community Design

Center (UACDC) where he is the Steven L. Anderson Chair in

Architecture and Urban Studies. His design and research have won more

than fifty design awards, including Progressive Architecture Awards,

American Institute of Architects Honors Awards, a Charter Award from

the Congress for the New Urbanism, and American Society of Landscape

257Biographies

Architecture Awards, all for planning and urban design. Mr. Luoni’s work at

UACDC specializes in interdisciplinary public works projects combining

landscape, urban, and architectural design. Current work includes design

and planning for municipal infrastructure, Low Impact Development in

residential development, campuses, parks, and big box retail. His work has

been published in Oz, Architectural Record, Landscape Architecture,

Progressive Architecture, Architect, Places, L’Architecture d’Aujourd’ hui,

Progressive Planning, and Public Art Review. He previously taught at the

University of Florida and was the 2000 Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor of

Architecture at the University of Minnesota. In Fall 2006 he was the Ruth

and Norman Moore Visiting Professor in Architecture at Washington

University in St. Louis, and The Bruce Goff Chair for Creative Architecture

at the University of Oklahoma in Spring 2008. Mr. Luoni has a BS in

Architecture from Ohio State University and a Master of Architecture from

Yale University.

Gilad Meron

Gilad Meron is an independent designer, researcher, strategist and writer

focused on community-based design practices and design education. His

current work includes research and program development for the

Autodesk Foundation, strategy and visual communication for Enterprise

Community Partners, and writing for various design publications and blogs.

He is a board member for the Association for Community Design (ACD)

where he leads a research project examining community engaged design

education and assists in developing the new ACD Fellowship Program.

Additionally Gilad co-leads an independent research project called

Proactive Practices that explores business models of public interest design

firms, and was recently awarded an NEA grant. Currently he also co-leads

an exploratory research initiative called Mapping Impact to identify and

compile toolkits, metrics, best practices, and case studies that will inform

impact assessment for design. Previously Gilad has worked with

organizations such as Cannon Design and Public Architecture as a design

researcher exploring community-based design practices and design

education.

258Biographies

 With backgrounds in design, research, graphic communication and

environmental psychology, Gilad has developed a multidisciplinary approach

to problem solving and a unique ability to synthesize and communicate

complex information both verbally and visually. Gilad is trained in

participatory action research and evidence-based design methods, and

strives to use design as a tool to increase civic engagement and community

empowerment. He is particularly interested in intersection of design,

economics and public policy, and seeks to continually deepen his practice

and knowledge through professional development and educational

experiences in fields including social work, government, public health, and

cultural anthropology.

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, FAIA

Professor & Dean, University of Miami School of Architecture

Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is Dean of the School of Architecture and

Distinguished Professor at the University of Miami. She joined the faculty in

1979 after earning her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture and Urban Planning

from Princeton University in 1972 and her Master in Architecture from Yale

University in 1974. At the University of Miami, she founded the School’s

graduate program in Suburb and Town Design in 1988.  She served as

director of the Center for Urban and Community Design from 1993 to

1995 organizing numerous design exercises for the benefit of communities

throughout South Florida and participates in a variety of forums related to

the natural and built environment of the region. She is a founder and board

member emerita of the Congress for the New Urbanism, board member

emerita of Princeton University, and currently board member of the

Institute of Classical Architecture/Classical America. In addition to her duties

at the University, she is in practice with Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company,

Architects and Town Planners. The firm’s work has received widespread

recognition. In addition, with Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, she co-authored

Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl And The Decline of the American

Dream (North Point Press, 2010) and with Duany and Robert Alminana,

The New Civic Art: Elements of Town Planning (Rizzoli, 2003).    

259Biographies

Frank Russell

Assistant Professor and Director, Community Design Center & Director,

Niehoff Urban Studio, University of Cincinnati

A registered architect, in 1990 Mr. Russell helped establish the Center for

Urban Design at the University of Cincinnati College of Design,

Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) serving as Assistant Director and

Adjunct Assistant Professor. Since 1996 he has directed the Community

Design Center, a state sponsored community outreach effort of the DAAP.

He initiated the Niehoff Urban Studio in partnership with the DAAP

School of Architecture and Interior Design and the School of Planning in

2002. Mr. Russell has contributed to Cities: the international Journal of

Policy and Planning, Design Review: challenging urban aesthetic control

(Chapman and Hall, 1994), and co-edited New Directions in Urban Public

Housing (CUPR Press, 1998). He has been the recipient of major grants

from the Ohio Arts Council and the American Architectural Foundation/

National Endowment for the Arts, directed the Midwest Regional Mayor’s

Institute on City Design sponsored by the AAF, NEA, and the US

Conference of Mayors, served as a Commissioner of the Cincinnati Park

Board and the Cincinnati Recreation Commission. Mr. Russell is past Chair

of the Urban Design Committee of AIA Cincinnati and currently serves as

a Trustee of the Cincinnati Zoo and board member of the Cincinnati

Riverfront Advisory Council. He holds an A.B. Art from Vassar College

(1983), an internship at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies,

New York City (1985), and a Master of Architecture degree from Harvard

University Graduate School of Design (1989).

Raphael Sperry, AIA

President, Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility

(ADPSR)

Raphael Sperry, AIA is an architect, green building consultant, and president

of Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR).

Established in 1981, ADPSR works for peace, environmental protection,

ecological building, social justice, and the development of healthy

communities. Mr. Sperry researches the intersection of architecture and

planning with human rights with a special focus on prisons and jails, and

260Biographies

advocates for design professionals to play a larger role in supporting human

rights in the built environment. He directs ADPSR’s human rights advocacy,

including ADPSR’s petition urging the AIA to amend their Code of Ethics

and Professional Conduct to address buildings that violate human rights.  In

2012, he became the first architect to receive a Soros Justice Fellowship

from the Open Society Foundations, hosted jointly by the University of

California at Berkeley College of Environmental Design and Berkeley Law

School.  Mr. Sperry is an active member of the AIA Academy of

Architecture for Justice and a leader of its subcommittee on sustainability

and the principal author of the Sustainable Building Checklist and

Guidelines developed for use by property owners and all those involved in

the local building industry. He holds an M.Arch. from the Yale School of

Architecture and a BA summa cum Laude from Harvard University.

Mia Scharphie

Multidisciplinary designer, researcher and community advocate who works

at the intersection of design, entrepreneurship and issues of social equity.

Passionate about the potential of design to catalyze social change, in 2012

Mia cofounded Proactive Practices, a research collaborative that identifies

and publicizes emerging business models of socially entrepreneurial design.

Mia recently served as the Northeastern University Architecture

Department’s first fellow, investigating emerging models of innovative

design practice, and she is the founder of Build Yourself+, a workshop that

teaches action-based empowerment skills to female designers. Her past

clients have included the Harvard Business School and Enterprise

Community Partners, and past employers have included Public

Architecture, and the SWA Group.  Her writings on issues of equity in

design have been published in the Christian Science Monitor and GOOD.

Katie Swenson, Frederick P. Rose Fellow

Vice President of Design, Enterprise Community Partners; Former Director,

Rose Fellowship Program

Ms. Swenson, co-founder and executive director of the Charlottesville

Community Design Center, currently oversees Enterprise Foundation's

National Design Initiative, leading elite fellowship and leadership programs

261Biographies

including the Affordable Housing Design Leadership Institute and the

Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellowship, nurturing a new generation of

community architects through hands-on experience and high-impact

projects. Her numerous awards include the Eldon Field Woods Design

Professional of the Year Award from the Charlottesville Planning

Commission, a Commonwealth Environmental Leadership Award from the

Charlottesville Waldorf Foundation and the Sara McArthur Nix Fellowship

for Travel and Research in France. A former member of the Charlottesville

Board of Architectural Review, she’s served on the boards of the

Association for Community Design and the Village School. Ms. Swenson,

whose writing has appeared in Growing Urban Habitats (William Stout,

2009) and Expanding Architecture: Design as Activism (Metropolis, 2008)

among others, holds a Master of Architecture from the University of

Virginia and a Bachelor of Art from the University of California, Berkeley.

Stephen Vogel, FAIA

Professor and Former Dean

University of Detroit Mercy School of Architecture

Mr. Vogel is the recipient of the Gold Medal from the American Institute of

Architects Michigan. He is a founding principal of Schervish Vogel

Consulting Architects with over thirty years of experience in architecture

and urban design. Mr. Vogel is also a partner in the Harmonie Development

Corporation, which develops small and medium sized urban, historic and

adaptive reuse projects and is the developer of the Harmonie Park/

Madison Avenue Redevelopment Project in downtown Detroit. This project

has received a national American Institute of Architects Honor Award for

Regional and Urban Design and a national Merit Award for Urban Design

from the American Society of Landscape Architects. The firm has

additionally received over fifty design awards from local, state and national

organizations for the excellence of its work. Mr. Vogel has been Dean of the

School of Architecture at the University of Detroit Mercy since 1993.

During that time he has focused the school's mission on service to the

urban community and to educating future architects committed to building

sustainable communities. He earned his Master of Architecture degree at

the University of Detroit in 1975.

262Biographies

Edited by: Dan Pitera & Craig L. Wilkins

Community design centers and other socially engaged practices expand the influence the built environmental professions have on culture and society. These practices work under the premise that designers should expand their clientele, where they work, and the types of projects they engage. This does not mean that design centers exclude people who typi-cally build or hire an architect, urban designer, landscape architect, or planner. Design cen-ters include more people, more programs, and more geographies in the process. They are advocates for people who are typically left out of design and place-making decisions. Design centers widen the undertaking beyond some people to include all (or more) people.

Photo: DCDC Design/Build | St. Joseph Rebuild Center, New Orleans

ArchitectureActivist...not content with the way things are...

Affect change in the established way of doing things.

Community design centers do not represent alternative work;

they alter how we work.